The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley

by Hannah Tinti

  They kept only a few belongings. Her father would bring his guns, and the box of Lily’s things from the bathroom, and Loo would grab their toothbrushes and some clean socks; a short, handheld telescope Hawley had bought her to look at the stars; and her planisphere—a circular map about the size of a dinner plate, made of plastic and cardboard, that tracked the constellations. It had belonged to her mother. Hawley had given it to Loo on her sixth birthday. Each new place they traveled to, she would wait until dark, spin the dial, set the right date and time, and the chart would reveal Cassiopeia, Andromeda, Taurus and Pegasus. Even if there were too many streetlights, and only the Big Dipper or Orion’s Belt was visible, wherever they were would start to feel like home.

  Once they unpacked, her father would buy them new clothes and Loo new toys and whatever else they needed. There was a certain kind of joy in this. And another in cracking the fresh spine of a book that Loo had read three times before. She would not say goodbye to the neighbors when they moved, or to her teachers, even if they were nice to her. She would not say goodbye to her friends, either, if she had friends, which she usually didn’t.

  Hawley and Loo ate ramen noodles in hot-water cups meant for tea. They opened Campbell’s soup with hunting knives and warmed them on cans of Sterno. On special occasions they ordered Chinese. It didn’t matter if they were in California or Oklahoma. They could always find a Fortune Palace. Fried egg rolls and wonton soup and scallion pancakes and hoisin sauce were Loo’s comfort foods.

  On her eleventh birthday they were in San Francisco, and there were so many Chinese food places to choose from that Hawley collected a dozen menus and let Loo pick whatever she wanted. When he came back to their motel room, carrying bags of fried rice and sesame noodles and moo shu chicken, Loo had set up a game of chess on the floor. The board was a birthday gift she’d opened that morning, wrapped in the comics page of the newspaper. They had played checkers all afternoon, but the set also came with pieces for chess.

  “You’re on your own with that one,” said Hawley. “I don’t know how to play.”

  “There’s instructions,” said Loo. “Each piece moves differently. The castle goes up and down and side to side. The bishop goes diagonally. The queen moves any way she wants.”

  “Let’s eat before the food gets cold.”

  Hawley opened a beer and turned on the television. They sat on the beds and dug into the rice and noodles and watched an old Marx Brothers movie together. When it was over, Hawley picked up the food containers and threw them into a bag and Loo sat back down on the floor with her game. Usually they played cards after dinner. Gin Rummy, Crazy Eights or Heads-Up Poker. For chips they used Hawley’s spare change, and the winner got to choose dessert from the vending machine. But Loo was ready to do something new. Her eyes had gone toward the chess pieces the moment she’d opened the box that morning. She checked the instructions again.

  “Need some help?” Hawley asked.

  “I want to figure it out.”

  “Suit yourself.” Hawley tied off the garbage. He tucked his Colt into the belt of his pants and pulled his shirt over it. He took the key and locked the room from the outside, and then she heard his footsteps as he carried the bag down the cement walkway toward the bins.

  Loo chose a knight and moved it in the shape of an L, two spaces forward and one to the left. Then she got up and went to the other side of the board and sat down. She tried to solve the game like a puzzle. She shifted one of the pawns. Then she got up and went to the other side of the board and did the same thing.

  The key slid in the door. Hawley came through and reset the locks, put the Colt on the bedside table, rolled a cigarette and cracked the window. There was a game show on the TV and the audience was clapping. But Loo knew how to drown out noises. She’d been drowning things out for as long as she could remember. And there was something exciting happening on these black and white squares, on this piece of cardboard with the crease in the middle. She’d hatch great strategies while playing the white, and the moment she picked up a black piece those plans faded against the backdrop of this other side that also wanted to win.

  She played until the sky darkened outside the motel window and the neon lights from the highway shone across the board and there were only the two kings left and one black rook. She couldn’t get the rook close enough to checkmate, and so she was just using it to push the white king across the board. Both kings, black and white, stumbled one step at a time in different directions until Loo lost patience and swept the remaining pieces down all at once with her arm.

  The TV was still on. A different game show now. The contestant trying to guess the right answer. A giant clock spinning and clicking off the seconds and the audience holding their breath. Hawley wasn’t paying attention. He wasn’t even facing the screen. He was sitting in the chair by the window. The ashtray on the ledge was filled to the brim with the ends of his cigarettes, and his eyes had been on Loo the whole time.

  “Who won?”

  “Nobody,” she said.

  Loo went into the bathroom and shut the door. She didn’t know why she was angry. The game had started full of possibility, but in the end it was as if she were surrounded by empty spaces, taking step after step to nowhere. She brushed her teeth and looked at her mother’s things. She spit and leaned closer to a photo strip of her parents taped to the left of the sink, next to the mirror. They were pressed close together in some roadside carnival booth—four pictures snapped in sequence, her mother making faces, her father edging out of the frame. They looked like they were sharing a wonderful secret that Loo would never know.

  When she came out of the bathroom the TV was off and the game had been folded up and put away. Hawley had fixed her bed and turned down the covers, as he always did, no matter where they were sleeping, even if it was in the back of the truck. Loo got under the blankets and he tucked her in.

  “I know where we’re going next,” he said.

  “Where?” Loo asked.

  “Someplace you won’t have to play alone.”

  “But I like being alone.”

  “I know,” said Hawley. “But you shouldn’t.”

  —

  THE FOLLOWING JUNE they arrived in Olympus, Massachusetts. Hawley told her it was her mother’s hometown. Lily had grown up in the ice-cold Atlantic waters, and Loo should have the same experience, ride the waves and hike to the lighthouse, canoe down the Megara River and sail from the Point to Tire Island. A normal life, Hawley said. With a real house and a neighborhood and friends her own age and a school where she could find a place to belong.

  They checked into a motel right on the water and went to the beach. Loo made a giant sandcastle, poking windows in the towers with her finger and dripping wet sand to seal the cracks, while Hawley built a wall to hold back the rising tide and then dug a moat so deep that the ocean seeped up and filled the channel. They used mussel shells for the doors and draped seaweed over the ramparts. Then they ate hot dogs and watched the sun go down and when it started to get cold they pretended they were monsters and smashed the castle to pieces, roaring and stomping and crushing the kings and queens and villagers beneath their feet.

  The next morning Hawley drove Loo over to meet Mabel Ridge. She was Loo’s mother’s mother, which meant that she was Loo’s grandmother. Hawley was nervous and wore his best shirt. He even made Loo put on a dress and brush her hair, something she rarely did. It had taken nearly an hour to get all the snarls out. The ones she couldn’t she cut with scissors, until her hair was chopped and uneven, like an animal had chewed one side.

  Mabel’s house was near a five-mile stretch of hard rocky woodland called Dogtown, set between Olympus, Gloucester and Rockport. Hawley told Loo that no one lived in Dogtown anymore, but three hundred years ago it had housed Puritan farmers and then fishing widows, freed slaves, outcasts and packs of abandoned, feral dogs that gave the place its name. Now the land was mostly a bird sanctuary, held in trust and crisscrossed with hiking trails, bu
t the dug-out cellars of the old stone houses were still there and drifters still passed through and people still occasionally got stabbed or robbed in the woods.

  “So you shouldn’t go in there,” Hawley said. “I want you to promise.”

  Loo promised. “How do you know all this?”

  “Your mother.” Hawley pulled the truck over and parked in front of a run-down house, with slanted stairs and peeling paint and a rusted Pontiac in the driveway.

  “Is this where she grew up?”

  Hawley nodded and Loo pressed her face against the window. There was an old brass knocker on the door in the shape of a pineapple.

  “Your grandmother and I need to talk about some things,” said Hawley. “So I want you to stay in the car for now.”

  “I want to go inside.”

  “You will,” said Hawley. “But we need to be invited first.”

  Her father got out of the truck and shuffled up the porch steps. He carefully lifted the brass pineapple hanging on the door and let it drop. The knocker seemed familiar to Loo, like something out of a half-remembered dream—the crown of leaves spread out like a flower, the golden color gleaming in the sun.

  An older woman opened the door, wearing goggles and wiping her hands on the front of her shirt. She did not seem like the grandmothers from Loo’s storybooks. She looked like the kind of woman who could field-dress a deer.

  Hawley said a few words. Mabel Ridge said a few words back. Her hand went to the doorknob, but Hawley said something else and it stopped her. She bent and peered around him. The girl and the woman locked eyes for a moment. Then Loo touched her chewed-up hair, and Mabel Ridge slammed the door. When Hawley got back to the truck he punched the dashboard and broke the radio. Loo was too afraid to ask what had happened and they rode back to the motel in silence, Hawley’s knuckles bleeding into the cuffs of his shirt.

  Back in their room, Loo took off her dress and put her jeans back on and Hawley pulled his bloody shirt over his head and threw it in the corner. They went down to the boardwalk and got some ice cream and sat on the beach in the same spot where they’d knocked down their castle the day before. The tide had washed over everything but there were bits and pieces of shells left behind and the moat was still full of water.

  “Do you like this place?” her father asked.

  “Sure,” said Loo.

  “Because we can leave if you want.”

  “We just got here.”

  “I know.”

  Loo watched her father’s torn knuckles bend and bleed as he licked his cone. She took another bite of ice cream, and let the chocolate melt on her tongue.

  “Let’s stay,” she said. “Screw that old bag.”

  “You shouldn’t say that,” Hawley said, laughing. “Your mother wouldn’t approve.”

  The next morning they started looking for a place to live, and instead of signing a short-term lease, her father used cash from a safe-deposit box in Boston to buy the old Henderson place by the water. The property circled out to the edge of the bay and covered five acres. It was the first time they had lived in a house with stairs. Loo’s bedroom was on the second floor, and had two windows and a small roof outside that she could climb out onto. Her father’s room was at the end of the hall. At first she had trouble falling asleep with all that quiet, tucked into her new bed, the bearskin pulled across her shoulders. The only thing that helped was listening to Hawley walking around the house at night. A sliver of light cut through the room as he checked on her. She closed her eyes. She tried to look peaceful.

  “Faker,” her father said.

  Then he closed the door and she listened to his footsteps walking away.

  Sometimes Loo caught glimpses of her grandmother at the market or heading to the Catholic church on Sundays. If the old woman saw them on the street she stepped into a store and waited until they had passed. When Loo pointed her out, Hawley would say only that Loo looked an awful lot like her mother, and that eventually Mabel Ridge would come around.

  “We’re family,” he said. “Whether she likes it or not.”

  —

  A MONTH PASSED and then another. Little by little Loo got used to the quiet in their new house, to hearing the floors creak in the middle of the night and the rattle of old storm windows instead of highway traffic. When he was home Hawley cut through the silence, kicking off his boots and shouting her name up the stairs. But her father knew how to be quiet, too. More than once he’d snuck up on her in the kitchen, or startled Loo on the roof outside her window. He would not be there. And then—he was there. Clearing his throat or striking a match and making her jump.

  One morning she woke to the sound of a bell ringing outside. She ran downstairs and saw Hawley coasting past on a new yellow bicycle. It was her first. He showed her how to ride it in the driveway. He kept his hand on the back of the seat until she got her balance, running alongside. It took most of the day, but eventually she made it down the street and then around the block. She did not notice when he let go.

  Together they went to the marine supply store and picked up waders and tools for fishing and clamming. Hawley had learned how to cast and dig for quahogs from his father, and Loo could tell he was excited to show her what he knew. Just before sunrise he shook her awake and led her through the woods to the shoreline. She had never seen the tide out so far, the water just a streak in the distance. The uncovered sand was littered with shells and crabs and a multitude of tiny, tiny holes.

  “Watch this,” her father said. Then he crouched and jumped, all six foot four inches, lifting his knees high. His body hung in the air, suspended for a moment, before both of his feet came down with a loud, hard thump. All around them the buried clams released streams of water, squirting straight into the air like hidden fountains. And at that moment Loo knew that they would really stay, that this place was different from all the others: the whole beach springing to life in the early morning, and her father grinning from ear to ear, like he’d just shown her the best thing in the world.

  —

  AT THE END of summer Loo enrolled in the local junior high. Hawley dug out her transfer file—which included past report cards, recent test scores, copies of her birth certificate and records to prove she had all her shots—and brought it with them to the principal’s office. Loo had gone to seven schools in seven states. This was number eight.

  After her placement test they were told that she’d done well enough to skip a year ahead, and would be joining the eighth grade. The principal was a portly, soft-spoken Swede with hair so blond it was nearly white, and a habit of belching whenever he was nervous. He smiled and shook Loo’s hand with his meaty fingers.

  “Your mother and I went to school together.”

  “Here?” Loo asked. “In this place?”

  “There’ve been improvements, of course, but yes, it’s the same building.”

  Loo looked around at the steam pipe radiators, the giant windows, the marble steps and lines of old metal lockers. The students eyed her as they walked by. The boys and girls seemed friendly enough. Maybe eight was her lucky number.

  “So you knew her,” Hawley said. “Lily.”

  “We were friends,” said Principal Gunderson.

  “Tell me something.”

  “What?”

  “About her.” Loo’s father had stepped up close to the principal. He was at least a foot taller than Gunderson, and she could tell he was making the man nervous. Hawley was missing his left earlobe—the cartilage scarred and twisted just beneath the canal—and the principal was trying not to stare.

  When she was younger her father used to tell her that a bird had snatched his ear away. Then it was a horse, then a lion, then a cow, then a dog. Loo would imagine each of these animals, setting their teeth into his skin, then she would pull on Hawley’s hair to cover it up.

  “She was a free spirit,” said Principal Gunderson. “Everyone liked Lily.”

  “That’s not what she told me.”

  “I mean
, well, I mean,” the principal released a gush of air, then attempted to swallow it back down. “I liked Lily. Perhaps that would be more accurate. I liked Lily very much.”

  Hawley remained close, looking down at the man in front of him, as if he was trying to figure out a problem. And then he stepped back, and held out his hand. “Thanks,” he said, “for taking care of Loo.”

  “If there’s anything I can do to help you settle in, just let me know.” The man was relieved now, talking fast. As if he had passed some test of his own. “And you should come by the Sawtooth, my family’s restaurant. We’ve got the best fish and chips in town.”

  “How about clams?” Loo asked. “Do you sell clams to people, too?”

  “Yes, clams too,” said Gunderson.

  Hawley glanced at his daughter. Then he reached up and tugged his missing ear.

  —

  WHEN THE FISHERMEN heard that Samuel Hawley was selling his catch directly to Gunderson’s restaurant, there were complaints, especially from Joe Strand and Pauly Fisk, who sold their shellfish at the weekly market and didn’t like outsiders or competition. Joe Strand and Pauly Fisk had grown up in Olympus. Neither of them had ever left. Fisk was on the portly side, and always wore the same baseball cap with the words “Hong Kong” sewn in the front. Strand liked to keep a small patch of wiry scrub at the base of his lower lip, that he credited with attracting the ladies. They both had ex-wives and sons who lived with them that they struggled to like.

  Neither of the men picked a fight out in the open with Hawley, but that didn’t stop them from spreading rumors about folks getting sick off his oysters, or from pouring bleach down on Hawley’s shoreline, either, killing off a whole mess of littlenecks.

  Through it all, Loo’s father didn’t say a word. Not until he came home one afternoon and found his waders gone and his gear fouled. Then he went straight to the Flying Jib and broke Joe Strand’s jaw. After that he tracked down Fisk, who was hanging out at the wharf wearing Hawley’s waders, and threw him off the pier. The waders filled and dragged the man under. Fisk might have drowned if it wasn’t for Hawley going in after him and cutting the straps.