Mistwalker

SIX Willa

Bailey put the thought in my head. That’s what I told myself, putting my stern to the Rock.

A thin finger stirred in my brain, making my head ache. The pain pulsed along with the engine. It got worse when I tried to pin down what I’d seen.

A bright streak for the black eyes, a low, thrumming thunder for the full curve of the lips. It was a strange, beautiful face, haloed by silver hair, cloaked in fog. Thinking about it made my head hurt so bad, my stomach turned.

I’d never been seasick, and I wasn’t gonna start. Playing back the plots in the GPS, I turned the Jenn-a-Lo to our waters. It wasn’t long before I came up on our first buoy. Throttling the engine, I stepped on deck and reached for the gaff. As I leaned to pull the first trap, I hesitated.

It felt like somebody was watching me. Turning slowly, I looked at the open sea all around. The day was too clear, too perfect, to be hiding anyone. The Marine Patrol and the Coast Guard never tried too hard to hide. What was the point? By the time they caught you doing something, it’s not like you had anywhere to run.

“Knock it off and fish,” I told myself.

Hooking the first trawl, I dragged the wet line into the hauler and switched it on. A trap rose to the surface in a sparkling ring of bubbles. A skinny lobster clicked at me, lazy and halfhearted. Maybe it felt like it had to put on a show.

Pulling it free, I turned it over. Deep, dark green against my orange Kevlar gloves, it waved its swimmerets in surrender. No eggs clustered beneath the tail, no notch to mark it a breeding female either. The beast spanned the length of my metal ruler and then some. A keeper.

I tossed it into the live tank and scooped new bait into the bag. Tied that in the trap, then checked my position. Careful to cover my tracks, I dropped the trap exactly where Daddy had.

He’d never know I was on the water.

The school might call, but I’d missed plenty of days onshore. The rest of the fleet had followed the lobster out deep; I’d be out and back before they sailed in for the night. Best yet, there was no reason to question my money from the co-op. Lobster was richer than bloodworms, but I could parcel it out.

It was slow, hauling traps alone. Stopping at every single buoy, pulling and emptying. Baiting and dropping it over the rail, only then moving to the next. It was slow, and it was hard.

But my shoulders didn’t even burn. They sang. My whole body did, back to doing what it was made for. My clothes got wet, and my skin got gritty with salt, and it was heaven.

All around me, the ocean played. Waves kissed the side of the boat. Wind hummed strange melodies, and there were echoes on the water. Sounds I couldn’t place or follow back. Sometimes it was a groan; sometimes a sigh. It was life, the water alive.

I felt sorry for the mainlanders, the people who thought lobster came from Plexiglas tanks. The people who thought sea salt was a gourmet name for the same stuff they poured out of blue boxes.

Those people didn’t know what it was to stand on deck, surrounded by nothing but the elements. It felt complete; I felt holy—just me and the ocean that made up most of the world.

Before sunset, the sky darkened. A deeper shade of blue, it told me to turn back. Without a single cloud before me, I was tempted to go for one more. Maybe two more. Maybe finish the string.

But there were fishing hours, and I was in enough trouble. I needed to fill up again, on bait, on fuel. I needed to get my lobster to the co-op before they died. Fishing was complicated enough when you were supposed to be doing it. I had to be satisfied with ten traps, and a promise to do more soon.

I lied to myself a little when I plotted my way home. With the tide going out, the shoals on the west side of Jackson’s Rock would be dangerous. I had to go around the east side. Wasn’t my fault that’s where the cliffs turned to beach. Had nothing to do with me that the Grey Man lived there.

The headache came back, sharp but strangely sweet. It was a dizzy kind of ache. Alluring, I guess. So when I sailed past Jackson’s Rock, I slowed, but I didn’t stop. It was enough to look at the shore, really look at it. Funny thing was, I’d sailed past it a thousand times, but I couldn’t remember seeing it before.

It was a secret, the other side of that island. And I couldn’t help but feel like I was the only one who knew it.

Daddy wasn’t sleeping in the armchair in the living room, he was just pretending to. The cut over his brow wasn’t much of anything. He held his arm like it should have been in a sling, though.

Pity mixed with annoyance, that’s what I felt. He knew better than to hold on to the gaff, but he was still hurt, and he was my father.

And since he was acting, I decided to go along. Carefully, I closed the door, my fingers pressed to the edge to dull the sound. Then I stood on the inside welcome mat, still and holding my breath.

“Hm?” he mumbled, turning his head in my direction. Still pretending.

Pulling a wad of bills from my jeans pocket, I thumbed through them, then left half my cash in the ashtray Daddy used for his pocket change. I kept the rest for later. Then, as I headed for the stairs, I murmured, “It’s just me.”

“Mm-hm.” He turned his face toward the window again. The hospital let him keep a pair of slippers, it looked like. That explained why his toes curled in pink, fuzzy footies. He’d been known to wear cranberry plaid, but there was no way he’d picked those out.

“I’ve got homework,” I said.

“The school called.”

My insides sank. Grabbing the banister, I turned back. “Yeah?”

“They’re saying you’ve missed twelve days this year,” he said. There was a strange note in his voice, and finally, he looked at me. “Where you been?”

“Worm digging, mostly.”

Daddy and I weren’t talking people. We could work together a whole season and say maybe three things. But there was a difference between quiet and silence, and ever since Levi died, what hung between me and Daddy was silence. It had weight; it made me feel ashamed.

Shifting from one foot to the other, I waited a minute, then decided he was done talking. Hauling myself up the stairs two at a time, I almost reached the landing before he called me back.

“Take your money.”

“It’s extra,” I said.

“I don’t care if it’s fruit salad. It’s yours, so you keep it.” Daddy closed his eyes, back to a liar’s sleep.

Acid rolled in my stomach, washing lazily from one side to the other. The mortgage was just about due; the utilities, too. We’d never discussed the bills, and definitely not me paying them. There was slack, and I’d picked it up. It’s what we did; it was my house too.

Until then, nobody had questioned the money I left in the ashtray (though I think it was safe to say we all knew it wasn’t from Santa).

I rubbed my hands together. “I’m trying to do my part.”

His jaw tightened. It made the knot on his forehead stand up, showing off the cut there a little better. “You’ve done enough.”

How many ways did he mean that? I couldn’t tell, but it cut all the same. I stepped down but didn’t let go of the rail. Instead, I let words out, daring to challenge his decision, and worse, his pride. “We’re gonna need fuel oil this month. Mom says that’s five hundred right there.”

“Willa,” he warned.

“Daddy,” I replied.

“Don’t make me raise my voice.”

In flashes and strobes, I crossed the room. Then I was back on the stairs, shoving bills into my pockets. Everything between was a great blank. My head echoed with things I didn’t say. Like, Nobody makes you do anything, Daddy, and What’s your freaking problem, anyway? I didn’t like worm digging. I didn’t want to be the one paying the bills.

Storming upstairs, I wanted a hundred reckless, useless things at once. All the things I could have bought with my roll. A new cell phone, a box of Passion Flakies. Oreos and ice cream, and a bobblehead for Bailey’s truck. Some useful things too. A laptop. A used boat and the tools to start fixing her up.

That last one felt like cheating on my family; shame chewed at me. But then Dad raised his voice. I don’t think he was yelling at me. Just yelling, but I still heard him. It was still about me.

A newspaper flapped downstairs, and Dad shouted, “I can keep my own goddamned house.”

“Who said you couldn’t?” I yelled back.

“Shut up!”

My thin veneer of numb broke. Heat and emotion spilled together, and I caught the frame of the door to steady myself.

That man downstairs, that wasn’t my father. That was Bill Dixon, who boxed bare-knuckle and wouldn’t let you buy him a beer because he wanted whiskey instead.

The same Bill Dixon who’d decked his best friend to keep him from jumping into a winter sea; who took a punch from Mal Eldrich like it was a kiss. I’d never met that man. He’d been a legend, a ghost.

Right until then.

I closed my bedroom door and leaned against it. Not to cry, but to pack my heart away. Squeezing my feelings into beads, I pinned them together and let them roll out of sight. Let them stay in the dark, and be small, and easy to ignore. Then, like nothing happened, I peeled out of my salt-stiff clothes and checked my phone. Bailey’d texted around lunchtime, and I was just then getting it.

There’s a party on Garland Beach, you coming?

Yeah. Yeah, I was.