Shot-Blue Read online

  Keb had never thought about Marie’s legs before this day.

  ‘Marie stays with me,’ Anuta told him. Their daughter Marie was going on twelve and Anuta had always kept her close.

  ‘Whatever.’ He was going to take Marie.

  Keb never came home and wanted to talk. He never woke up and wanted to have sex. He never looked for her anymore in the middle of the day. And now there was this shit.

  ‘She’ll like it,’ he said, ‘so I’ll take her.’

  ‘You don’t need to take her. Just go and leave her out of it.’

  ‘She’ll come. Then I won’t be alone.’

  ‘Alone? There’s that woman there.’

  There was unrest in his pleasure. He dressed slowly, trying to take command of himself.

  ‘You should wear a warmer shirt or put on an undershirt,’ Anuta told him.

  ‘This shirt is fine,’ he said. It was too thin, night had dropped below zero, but he didn’t care.

  ‘You know what, you can take her,’ she said. Her only power was to consent. ‘But you have to take care of her.’

  If she were a boy, Marie would have known how to take the lake – its whole length from heel to throat. She wanted to go out on the water and get sunburnt like her father. His skin was so much darker and more useful than hers; it was rough, it could take the weather. She wanted to be caught in a storm with a wind so strong it would drive them inland to some unfamiliar shore. She didn’t know the quality of her father’s company, if it was good, but she wanted to know it. Didn’t he know that? Every day she ran to the dock, knelt down, untied the ropes to his boat, and flipped them into the hull. ‘Watch your fingers,’ he sometimes told her. But she did not care about her fingers.

  She might have written a note and put it in his pocket: ‘Father, please take me with you, away from here and Mother. Mother never smiles at me. She never laughs at anything.’ But he would read the note and wonder who’d written it. He didn’t notice her, he didn’t smile either. She might have written a note like that but never would have signed it. Say she signed it and her mother found out, life would end, but not with a bang. First the clothesline would snap, the clothes would fall and rub into the ground. The ropes holding their boats to the dock would come undone and drag and soften in the water. The generator would cough and stop the water flowing to the kitchen tap. The only alarm would be the doors falling off their hinges and slapping the ground like bodies. Without remark – they never said anything anyway – no one would expect dinner that night or breakfast the following morning. Their cabin would collapse into the heap it was. The lake would rise and swallow their island, taking it back from them. Love, Marie.

  She never counted days. Every day was the same day, though it was summer now, so the sun punched a hole in the sky and the heat poured out. She stared at the hole until her eyes hurt, then tried drawing it. But the sun couldn’t be drawn; it spread over the water, up the steps, and across the table and the backs of her hands. She tried circles of different sizes. She tried emanating rays, lines stuck out of the circle like candles poking out of a cake. It was with a drudging sense of her own awkwardness that Marie abandoned the sun and turned to her diary. But she had nothing to write down. Nothing until a shotgun fired and echoed in the narrows at the bottom of the bay. It wasn’t hunting season. She hoped they missed and wondered if her hope could thwart the shot. She called the sky shot-blue in her mind, then wrote it down, shot-blue.

  That’s when Keb came to the open porch and hit the table she was writing on with a flat hand. He said, ‘You’re coming with me.’

  Marie closed her book and roughly tied back her long, tangled hair. She wanted to braid it but knew this might betray her pleasure and take too long.

  Going inside to get her boots, Marie was stopped by her mother. ‘You look proud of yourself,’ she said. Marie realized she was smiling too much and breathing through her mouth. She had been so surprised by her father and his flat hand that her hands were shaking. She could only stick her boots on and jam the laces in at the top.

  ‘Don’t come back a mess!’ her mother called after her.

  ‘I won’t,’ Marie answered, hoping that she might find occasion to make a mess of herself.

  As they walked to the boathouse, she didn’t look at her father in case he might change his mind.

  ‘I guess you want to know where we’re going,’ he said.

  ‘No,’ she answered, looking straight ahead, ‘that’s okay.’

  Keb didn’t know what to think of his daughter. He had always assumed she was like Anuta, since the two of them spent all day together, but it wasn’t true. Marie was different. She was unsure of herself. He saw her untied boots and tumbled hair and liked that she was a bit ridiculous. ‘I’ll sit here?’ said Marie, putting her hand on the seat beside him. Keb didn’t answer because she could sit anywhere. ‘You could use a friend,’ was all he said. ‘There’s a boy your age, just like you.’

  The boat picked up and felt light. She’d seen the boy on Treble Island with his mother – she always kept a hand on his shoulder or at the back of his neck. At chapel last Sunday, he’d slept through the whole thing with her fingers in his hair. Marie would have liked to sit with that woman’s arm around her, with those long fingers in an arc in her hair.

  It was Marie’s sin that she longed for a different mother, and maybe that one. ‘Stop looking at that woman,’ her mother had told her on Sunday. Marie had been staring, it was true. Because they were new. ‘Don’t stare at her. And while you’re at it, don’t stare at anything.’

  But Marie had kept staring at the woman’s back. She was waiting for her to turn. She wanted to see her. The woman’s face admitted its own weakness. Marie was sorry, she didn’t know what for, but not for staring. Generally she was very sorry, but to no purpose at all that she could understand. Everyone seemed sorry. Or they were angry. This woman was not like that.

  Rachel somehow eased Marie’s conscience, which was like a pulled muscle, sore to touch. Seeing her made Marie feel that more was possible. For the first time, she started using the word beautiful in her mind. That woman’s face was beautiful. Something amiss would from then on be a requisite for beauty for Marie. Her face was like the Jordan River in the song Marie loved: full of waves of sorrow white and high. The scar was a wave stuck in breaking. It looked awful, like the skin was ground dug up by a dog. Marie wanted to know if it would heal. She didn’t want it to, did that make her unkind?

  ‘Such eyes,’ she now sometimes said to herself, when there was nothing else to do, lying in bed, feeling the cold air come through the open window; or here, on the water, the waves made sense of the repetition, ‘such eyes.’ When Marie thought about Rachel’s eyes, part of her went gently unconscious. And so it was, Marie, at twelve going on thirteen, was in love with the most unlikely person. She didn’t know better, and she would never know better, because she didn’t want to.

  As they landed on the island Marie realized she had seen nothing go by.

  ‘You stay here. I’ll send Tristan to find you,’ said Keb.

  So his name was Tristan. Marie did not like to tell people her name.

  All she knew about this boy was that he belonged to his mother, who kept her hand in his hair. Also, his skin was as white as the inside of a woman’s thigh – Marie had overheard Codas complaining about the boy’s health to her mother, and that’s how he described his pallor. Marie was moved to write it down in her diary that evening. Her mother had answered Codas, ‘White as a fish belly-up,’ but Marie didn’t write that one down because she never wrote down anything her mother told her.

  ‘Why did you bring her here?’ asked Rachel.

  ‘I just thought of it.’

  ‘What if she tries to find you and we’re together?’ she asked, putting her face against his arm. His arms were very long and thin and she liked them. ‘You shouldn’t have brought her.’ She felt close to Keb, not because they were close, but because they were comfortable at a dista
nce.

  ‘She won’t do anything.’

  ‘You should wash your shirt,’ she said, now lightly holding his hand. ‘It smells like gasoline.’ She kissed his shirt over his shoulder.

  ‘I’ll wash it.’

  ‘You can’t use her as cover.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  Rachel kissed his shirt again. ‘Your shirt is disgusting.’ She kissed his neck.

  Keb wasn’t used to affection. He put a hand on her forehead lightly. He looked quickly at her dark eyes, then away at nothing. Her eyes were overpowering, even when she was half-awake.

  ‘Do you know what you’re doing here?’ she asked.

  The room felt like open water. They would drift unless they could decide to go somewhere. Keb wanted to tell her that he loved her but knew it was not the right thing. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘I live here,’ she said.

  Rachel propped plywood boards on the windowsills to block the view. A cut of light still came in at the top and hit the counter, the floor, and the foot of the bed, drawing a line they crossed in and out of. Like this, the cabin reminded her of a clearing in the woods, the kind she could find off-path. She thought about those found places as he took off her clothes and put her down on the edge of the bed. They’d never kissed shyly, only deeply from the start; they fit, and so they could have sex with their full strength, no small thing, their bodies making more and more sense as they used them. He was so much stronger, but Rachel felt his equal. She put her hands on his face, her fingers in his mouth, her hand around the back of his neck. He let her push back, though maybe he had no choice, and when she kicked the headboard half-off by accident, he turned around laughing and kissing and kicked it clean off.

  Marie didn’t have her hat and suffered for it. The sun was like blown glass turning in a cloudless sky.

  Stepping on shore rocks, Tristan approached her. He was a hunter and the boat was a beast. Approaching slowly, he imagined that the long, smooth, varnished boards were covered in thick fur. The heat wasn’t coming from the sun, but from the beast’s damp breath.

  The sun tired her eyes so much she had to close them. This made her feel like an idiot. She sat waiting – for what – and now she would not be able to see it when it arrived.

  One day, he would kill this thing and sink the body.

  Drugged by the sun, Marie lowered into a bundle on the bottom of the boat.

  Tristan started with beady pebbles pulled from the shallows. He lobbed them so high they hung pleasantly in the air before falling. Some ticked against the side of the boat, some fell short in a chorus of tiny sucking sounds, and some shot into the hollow, bounced, rattled.

  Three hit Marie, one on the back of her hand at the wrist and two on her neck damp with sweat.

  Unaware of the sleeping girl, Tristan tossed a greedy handful that darkened the air like a hatch of flies. A hatch of nails. Marie woke as this cloud descended, covering her head with her hands too late. She whipped her knees to her chest.

  Kneeling now in the shallows, Tristan searched the bottom by running his hands over it. What he wanted was to put his hands all over the invading presence. He settled for a stone that fit his palm. The problem with tiny stones was that he could not really aim them. But this one could be controlled. He threw it in a low arch and savoured its flight by tightening his body and holding his breath, listening for a hollow crack. But nothing happened. It never hit. Still breathless – holding it in – he kept listening far past the time it was possible the stone might land.

  It mutely struck the side of Marie’s small right breast. She was half-blind, her vision mottled by sleep and sun, but she understood what was happening now. As she stood and met him standing alone, up to his waist in the water, she forgot her breast and felt only a near-debilitating rush of sympathy. He looked like a poor little animal, hungry and upset. His face was expressionless, but his bare chest was white and caved in. He was much smaller than she had imagined.

  ‘Hi,’ she said.

  Tristan tried to run, forgetting that he was standing in the water.

  ‘Hello,’ she tried again. Marie didn’t know where to begin. Maybe, with Tristan, this was the beginning. ‘Are you hurt?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ she told him.

  ‘You missed me.’

  Rachel pulled Keb’s shirt across her chest and went with bare legs to the window. As she took the plywood boards down, she was thinking of Marie. Poor girl, she thought, trying to remember what she looked like. She wasn’t sure she’d ever seen her. Tristan would slight her if he found her. Sometimes he slighted his mother.

  ‘Go home,’ she said to Keb, still looking out. ‘Please go home. I wonder about the kids.’

  ‘No,’ he said, not sitting up.

  ‘Yes.’

  §

  As Rachel and Tristan pulled away from their island early one Sunday morning, the sun rose over their shoulders then sunk back down. The sky lost its grandeur and looked like a bad painting, slopped on. Tristan tried to hide but the rain that came down was so hard it bounced off the lake and came at him from below. ‘Don’t bother,’ Rachel yelled, hating to see him curl his shoulders. She wanted to pull his shoulders back. ‘Don’t do that, Tristan,’ she told him. He was hiding as if he could, but the storm wasn’t looking for them – it was oblivious. There was no point in shrinking. She might shrink. She could take any shape, but he must not.

  When they landed on Treble, their hands were like wax. They threw their paddles onto the dock and pulled themselves up using their forearms and elbows, afraid to use their fingers. They stood on the dock without talking and tried to let their clothes dry in the wind. But the wind had moved on. Now only small scurrying gusts bristled the skin of the water. As a child, Rachel had believed the wind listened to her, and she would have tried at a time like this to talk to it, but she didn’t believe that anymore.

  She put her hands under Tristan’s shirt, one on his back and one on his chest, but this only made him shake harder. Her hands were cold through the middle. She tried drying his hair with the bottom of her shirt but her shirt was wet.

  A few houses stood on the dirt road that led to Codas’s land. Laundry snapped in the wind like people clapping, but not in celebration, urging the show to its end. There was a strong sense of expectation that nothing would happen here this morning. Pushing Tristan in front of her to keep him going, Rachel went to the first house. It had a front door the colour of forget-menots, those timid flowers that spread like loneliness and took over everything, she thought. They were her favourite flowers.

  As she lifted her hand to knock at the familiar blue, two loose dogs sprung out from around the side porch. They barked and jerked, whining high as they spun their tight bodies in circles. They were patchy and pinto, a breed she didn’t know and didn’t like. If Rachel had been wearing a sword, hung comfortably at her hip, she would have drawn it and slayed them. Instead she walked backwards, pulling Tristan by a handful of his shirt. When they reached the road, the dogs twisted their haunches and bucked like horses, clacking their teeth. That was the blue door.

  It was a hard time on Treble Island, so most of the clothes on the lines flew worn, at one with the wind. She looked for children’s clothing. Her next choice was a door painted the same brown as the rest of the house. This seemed practical. Before she could knock, the door opened and there stood an older woman with a handsome face and strong body. She was neatly and warmly dressed.

  ‘My name is Rachel and this is Tristan.’ Rachel was not feeling well and would have trouble explaining herself.

  ‘I know who you are. Isn’t this a small place?’

  ‘I didn’t want to bother you.’ She was embarrassed that the door had opened before she could knock. ‘Do you have something we can borrow? Clothes? They don’t need to fit.’

  ‘Clothes should fit,’ the woman said. She didn’t invite them in but came back with a shirt, pants, and socks. When Rachel reached for them, the woman told her to wait, becaus
e she would do it.

  Tristan let her. He stood still, held his arms up, lifted his feet one at a time. He watched the woman’s unfamiliar, thick hands button his shirt and met her face at the top. She smiled easily and kindly, but also efficiently: soon her smile was done. She was so unlike his mother, who always seemed sad when she helped him get dressed.

  Rachel watched with her wax hands stuck at her sides, feeling she would never lift them again. There were no clothes for her.

  When they turned to go back to the road, Tristan tried to take one of Rachel’s hands, but she wouldn’t let him. He tried one side, then ran around her back and tried the other. Rachel pulled her hands out of his reach. This was no protest, she couldn’t do it. She felt so tired, like she might lie down on the road there and sleep. It might have been the damp clothes, stuck to her thighs and back, bringing her down in a slow tackle. She tried to think, but couldn’t because her body was thinking for her, batting the child’s hand.

  When they arrived at the old chapel door, Codas was there. What did he think about, standing alone with no one to talk to? she wondered vindictively. He was a poor man with no thoughts of his own. That was poverty. She knew she affected him. Things couldn’t be controlled, didn’t he know that? People couldn’t be controlled.

  She raised a tacky grey hand, ‘Hey there,’ she said.

  ‘Rachel, you look bad.’

  ‘There’s no meaning in it.’

  Codas had slept through the early storm and had no idea it had rained. It looked to him like Rachel had fallen into the lake. Her hair was wet against a wet shirt. She had to be sick, the boy was dry. But the way the boy was clinging to her, sharing her breath, maybe he would catch her illness, maybe he wanted that.

  The chapel smelled like wet ropes and oil and gas. People had come as usual from down the road and paths, and from across the water, to form a small crowd in a land of no crowds. Other than this, Prioleau was clear of human souls.

  Rachel’s head fell to her shoulder as Codas started talking about the dam schedule.