The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley

by Hannah Tinti

  “Check for an exit wound,” said Hawley.

  She turned him on his side. It felt like a giant weight pressed against his lungs. Her fingers ran over his back and shoulder. “There’s a lot of blood.”

  “Bullets,” Hawley said, “usually go right through me.”

  “This one didn’t.”

  She looked for bandages. She tore them open with her teeth. She pressed the cloth to the hole in his chest. He knew that she wasn’t Lily anymore but Loo didn’t seem like herself, either.

  “You’re not hurt?” he asked.

  She tapped the vest he had given her.

  Hawley closed his eyes in relief. He pressed against the pain branching through every nerve, threading a thousand needles.

  “What about Jove?”

  They both looked where Jove had fallen, his body tangled with the giant bear. His face was pale but he was still breathing. Loo checked his pulse.

  “I don’t know what to do next.”

  “We’ll figure it out.” Hawley tried to grab her hand but his fingers slid. She was drenched. Shivering. “Loo,” he said. “You did so good. You did everything right.”

  “I couldn’t kill him.”

  Hawley squeezed her palm. “I’m glad.”

  There was something wrong with her face. He couldn’t tell at first but then he knew.

  “Get the bottle,” said Hawley.

  “You’re dying,” she said.

  “No I’m not,” said Hawley.

  Loo pressed another bandage against his chest. Then she reached underneath the seat. The whiskey was still there. She unscrewed the cap and lifted it to his mouth. He could smell the animal fear on her breath.

  “No,” said Hawley. “It’s for you.”

  Loo took a swig. She coughed but she took another.

  “There,” he said. “Still crying?”

  “No.”

  “Good. Now take us home.”

  The boat was rocking but Hawley felt still. The world was righting itself, turning sky to water. Water to sky. He’d spent his whole life pushing upstream, struggling and cutting through the current, forcing himself over waterfalls and dams, and at long last he’d finally stopped beating his ragged tail against the rocks and was sliding in the right direction. Moving with the world instead of fighting against it.

  Why didn’t I do this sooner, he thought.

  Loo slapped his face. “Stop dying,” she said.

  “Troublemaker,” said Hawley. “Your mother would never approve.”

  Loo

  NIGHT CAME DOWN. IN LESS than an hour Loo could barely see the shadow of her father in the boat. Across the sky was a multitude of stars. There was no moon.

  They had lost their radio and navigation. The system box in the cabin was hit when the portholes were blown out. With Hawley’s help she’d used the last gasp of the setting sun to take an initial bearing, but now they’d been traveling for miles in the dark and Loo sensed they’d fallen off course. There was a flashlight in the hold and for half an hour she had held it pressed to her shoulder with her chin while her fingers worked, trying to reconnect the wires, before she gave up and crawled back onto the deck and took the captain’s seat and wrapped her hand around the tiller. She did not know which way to turn or if she should turn at all. But a decision had to be made and there was no one else and so she drove blindly into the dark, hoping she was going in the right direction.

  Loo covered Jove with one of the blankets. She’d packed his wound and given him some morphine for the pain. His hands were cold when she touched them. She was afraid that he would die before they reached shore. Her clothes were still wet from going overboard. When the wind picked up she started to shiver. She was the only one in the boat without a bullet in her body.

  “Lift his shoulders,” said Hawley.

  Loo got another blanket and pushed it beneath Jove’s back so that he was at an angle. “How long do you think he has?”

  “Not long.”

  “I could shoot another flare.”

  “There’s only one left,” said Hawley. “Save it until you see some lights. We’ll run into the Coast Guard eventually.”

  “How are you feeling?”

  “I’m fine,” said Hawley. But when she pointed the flashlight he didn’t look fine. His face was pale and his eyes were unfocused. She took his hand and it was as cold as Jove’s. She found another blanket in the hold and covered him. She got another pressure bandage and wrapped it around his chest. She checked his pulse. It was weak but it was there, a soft signal beating beneath his skin.

  “Just rest for a while.”

  He didn’t argue. He closed his eyes.

  Loo got the binoculars from the cabin. She climbed onto the bow, turned left, then right, but it was like looking into nothingness—two black circles of glass. The only thing of any consequence in any direction were the stars.

  She had never seen so many. The dome of sky spread out unencumbered and uninterrupted by landscape, by trees or mountains or houses. The heavens fell down like a bell jar, meeting the edge of the earth, a stunning multitude of galaxies and satellites and distant suns so bright she could not find the North Star among them. Even the planets were lost in the hazy spread of the Milky Way. Loo wished she had her star map, with its diagrams and spinning circles, but it was packed in her suitcase, left behind at Mabel Ridge’s house. For years she had carried the planisphere with her from place to place, studied its contours in motel rooms and hotel rooms, in diners and libraries, in the back of classrooms and her father’s truck, under the bearskin rug and in the bathtub and finally on the roof of her own home. Tracing the patterns of constellations. Memorizing their names. Finding comfort in the way that infinite space could be fixed and charted.

  Loo closed her eyes. It was not that different from having them open. The heavens were still there, beneath her eyelids. Tiny sparks. She could smell the salt. She could feel the boat rocking. She listened to the waves and her father’s shallow breath and slid her hands across her face. The map was inside of her. She knew these stars. They had been drawn across her own body.

  When Loo opened her eyes and looked through her fingers, the darkness seemed brighter. Clearer. She watched the froth of the sailboat’s wake disappearing, then lifted her chin and searched through the radiants for the first constellation she had ever learned: Ursa Major. The Great Bear’s back branched off from the four stars shaping its body, pointing the way toward the more hidden Ursa Minor. The Little Bear resembled the Great Bear the way a child resembles her parent. A smaller configuration of the same parts. A mirror image with the contents slightly shifted but containing something more powerful than size or strength at the end of its tail, a faithful constant, a guiding principle: the North Star.

  Now that Polaris was in her sights, Loo felt her heart calm to a single purpose. Like the moment in Dogtown when she discovered those giant, unmovable, erratic rocks. The stars were signposts, just like the words carved in the stones, and she could find her way by moving from one to the other, just as she’d traveled through the woods from TRUTH to COURAGE to NEVER TRY NEVER WIN.

  Loo raised her fist and held it toward the horizon. Starting at zero, she began to count, using her own body as the compass. Ten degrees for each fit of her knuckles into the sky. The North Star set at ninety. They were around forty-three degrees north. And they needed to head west. Loo pushed the tiller hard alee, putting Ursa Minor firmly on the starboard side of the boat.

  The sails luffed and filled with wind. On the bench beside her, Hawley shifted.

  “I know where we are,” she said. “At least, I think I do.” The world had suddenly come into focus, and now all of the constellations were making themselves known to her. Perseus and Pegasus. Cetus and Hercules.

  She could not see her father’s face, only his chest rising and falling. Every moment that he did not speak made her more anxious. She pointed overhead. “That star is Vega, I think. It has a blue color, and it’s one of the brightest,
next to Polaris. It’s part of Lyra, the harp that belonged to Orpheus. He played it to convince Hades to release his wife from the underworld. Are you listening? Dad?”

  “I know that story,” said Hawley. “He shouldn’t have looked back.”

  She hadn’t taken off the bulletproof vest. Underneath her clothes were damp, her skin covered with goosebumps. Her body was bruised and her ribs hurt whenever she took a breath. The impact of the bullets had been absorbed directly into her body. She could still feel the vibration deep inside her bones, the energy of the blast that forced her over the edge of the boat, the wind knocked out of her lungs. She was so scared she couldn’t feel the cold and then she did and she was surrounded by white water. Not knowing which way was up or down. Then her father’s life jacket had lifted her back to the surface. And with her first gasp of air, she’d felt the opposite of dead. She’d felt real and full of power, the same way she’d felt staggering out of the ocean and breaking Marshall’s finger—as if all her fear had been nailed shut tight inside a barrel.

  “Your mother,” Hawley said. His breath was ragged.

  “Tell me something about her,” Loo said. “Something I don’t know.”

  Hawley tugged at his beard. “Well,” he said. “One time, she shot me.”

  “What? Where?”

  “Here.” Hawley pointed to the back of his leg. “It was a perfect shot. But on normal days she couldn’t hit a target. I had to scare her to get her to focus. Like when you first started.”

  “Some trick.”

  “It worked,” said Hawley. “We wouldn’t be here now if it didn’t.”

  She adjusted the tiller. Pulled the ropes. “I should check on Jove.”

  “Loo.” Hawley spoke softly. He reached out and took her hand. “Jove’s dead. He’s been dead for the last twenty minutes.”

  Loo pulled away. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

  “I didn’t want to scare you.”

  She got to her knees. She felt Jove’s wrist and pressed her fingers to his neck. It was like touching the slabs of meat in the walk-in freezer at the Sawtooth. A solidity beneath the skin. Jove had lost his hat and his hair was in tangles. Loo patted it down, then covered his scarred face with the blanket. She got back into the captain’s seat.

  “Do you need a drink?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I do,” said Hawley.

  She found the bottle, raised it to his lips. Watched him swallow. Hawley coughed and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. There was blood on his lips.

  “We should say something,” she said.

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. A blessing. Like at the christening.”

  “It won’t help him now.”

  “Not for Jove,” said Loo. “For us.”

  Hawley dug inside his pocket. “I don’t know any prayers.”

  Loo thought of Jove’s sleeping bag, the pattern of ducks on the inside and the hole that leaked feathers all over their house. For weeks after he’d left, she’d found tiny clusters of down in the corners of the porch, woven into the fabric of their rug, even in the cupboards, between the plates and the coffee cups. That same sleeping bag was in the hold now. She had crawled on top of it when she slid the barrel of the shotgun out the window, and a cloud of white fluff had ripped loose from the seam.

  “Help me with this,” said Hawley.

  Loo took the tobacco pouch from him. She peeled off one of the rolling papers, tucked in a pinch of thick, sweet-smelling leaves. She licked the ends of the paper, spooling the cigarette together, twisting the ends.

  “We can talk about him,” said Hawley. “And share what we remember. Then after we die maybe other folks will talk about him, too. Or they won’t, and no one will remember him. And his story will end there.”

  “That’s terrible.”

  “It’s just the way it is,” said Hawley.

  On the port side, there was something riding on the water, bobbing on the waves. A ghost that dove and rose and shook its beak until she saw that it was a seagull. Catching the starlight on its feathers. Another gull circled past and then landed close to the first, leaving a crest on the surface of the water.

  “What are the birds doing out this far?” Loo asked.

  “They must be following something,” said Hawley. “A trawler, maybe.”

  Loo stood on top of the bench. She scanned the dark horizon. But there was nothing. No lights. No land.

  Hawley coughed again. He tried to sit up. “I got us into such a mess.”

  “It’s all right.”

  “It’s not,” said Hawley.

  The cigarette she’d just rolled was still in her hand. She put it between his lips. She took his lighter and lit the end. The tip glowed red. He blew smoke then glanced over at Jove, hidden beneath the blanket.

  “I don’t want you to feel responsible if something goes wrong.”

  “You’re my father,” said Loo.

  “I know,” Hawley said. “But I’ve been in your place before. And you can’t save everyone.”

  The motor rumbled beneath the deck. She could feel the gears turning. Each piece working together to make the engine run.

  “Watch me,” said Loo.

  She used her fist to measure the sky. She counted to Polaris. She pushed the tiller until the boat jibed, the wind whipping around hard and snapping the sail.

  “What are you doing?” said Hawley.

  “Heading to the Banks. It’s closer than the shore. The Athena will be there and they should have doctors on board. Scientists, at least. And a radio.”

  “Your boyfriend, too,” said Hawley.

  “He’s not,” said Loo. “Not that. Not anymore.”

  Hawley threw the end of his cigarette overboard. “Well, I hope you’ll keep trying.”

  “Trying for what?”

  “To be with someone.”

  It was as if he’d been listening to her inner thoughts. As if he knew Loo was afraid that no one would ever love her.

  “You told me you weren’t going to die.”

  “I’m not,” he said.

  “Then shut up.” Loo clicked on the flashlight again. She checked his bandages. They weren’t holding. She opened another roll of gauze and wrapped it around and around his shoulder. She dug through the med kit searching for anything else that could help. She tried not to look at Jove’s body, stretched out beside Hawley on the deck, turning stiff and cold beneath the blanket.

  “Roll me another cigarette.”

  “You shouldn’t be smoking,” Loo said, but grabbed the pouch anyway. She lifted one of the thin pieces of paper and stuffed it with tobacco, her fingers shaking, just as they had when Hawley first put a gun in her hands.

  “There’s a list of my deposit boxes in the licorice jars. I put the keys in there, too.”

  Loo flicked the lighter, cupped it with her hand, and for a moment her father’s face was lit with dancing shadows across his jaw and circling his eyes, so that his features looked like parts of a broken mask, and then the flame went out and there was nothing but his cigarette. She watched the ember glow and fade and she inhaled her father’s smoke and she was back in the woods behind their house five years ago. She felt the rifle in her arms. She turned her head and listened. Hawley was leaning against a rock in the sun. He was telling Loo to name her target.

  “The rest of the money is in a trust. You’ll get it when you turn eighteen. The lawyer has all the instructions.”

  “Shut up, shut up, shut up!” Loo cried.

  The motor dropped out and the world went quiet. Loo checked the gasoline. They were low. She decided to save it. The wind was picking up and the sails were taut. When the boat heeled, Loo pressed her own weight against the starboard side. She kept the bow pointed north.

  “We should have bought a boat like this,” said Hawley. “We could have had picnics. It would have been nice.”

  “We have one now,” said Loo.

  “I guess you’re r
ight.”

  There were more birds gathering, gray phantoms bobbing in the water and circling above, riding the air currents, then darting up toward the stars and spiraling downward. The wind was different and the air had changed. It smelled like an island. Seaweed and barnacles. The Banks, Loo thought. They must be getting closer.

  “I’m glad you threw away the watch,” said Hawley.

  “How much was it worth?”

  “Too much.”

  His words were starting to slur. Hawley pulled on his cigarette, then lifted it from his mouth. Released the smoke like he was releasing years of his own life. Then the ash was falling, the paper tip crackling and curling, and the birds all rose from the ocean at once, flapping and calling to one another. Ahead, Loo saw the waves flatten into a slick pool, and then something rose out of that flatness, a crusted, pale hump of earth that split open and discharged a mist of ancient, pressurized air.

  “Dad.” Loo pushed hard against the tiller. “There’s something out there.”

  Hawley turned to face the water. Whatever the creature was, it had fallen back under the surface. Loo swallowed hard. She had spent so much time focused on the stars overhead that she had ignored what might be below them. Now she imagined the deep distance beneath the hull, miles upon miles of water, and all the life that was living there in the dark. Animals that had no need for light, no need for air, no need to come to the surface except to feed.

  A rush of bubbles surrounded the boat. There was a sucking noise, of water being displaced, and a whale broke surface right next to the sailboat, sending a blast of spray directly off the port side. A rush of brackish water fell down over their heads. Loo threw her arms across her father, and when the shower ended she reeked of algae and slippery rocks and Hawley’s waders and the powerful joints of mussels and clams that kept the halves of their shells snapped tight together. It was the scent of water meeting land. It was the whale that smelled like an island.

  She could tell from the glow of fins beneath the waves that it was a humpback. The rest of its body was nothing but a giant silhouette, a shadow circling the boat and nudging the hull. Loo gripped the tiller. She knew that whales could dive for forty minutes. Live whole lives between each inhale and exhale. But this whale stayed close. As if it were making up its mind about Hawley and Loo.