by Sarah Blake
And the feeling that had floated under him all night long, through the music and the dancing, everyone gathered in one enormous room, buoyed his spirit. He imagined Joanie in Len’s arms somewhere in the woods, and it underscored the song. This was the new song, a song without—walls. The voices adding one to the other, voices adding, joining the strain. There was the bass. There was the melody. The future seemed to him just then to spin on the point of the world and find itself here on the water between islands, in the dark, on a boat with this man.
He paused and leaned on the oars and looked at Reg, complete.
“Look at that.” Moss pointed.
Reg turned and saw the lantern on the dock and the lights shining from the front of the house, and then, higher in the dark, he could just make out the lights from the barn. “How many tanks of gas do you suppose it takes to light all that up?”
Moss couldn’t read the expression on his face. “I don’t know.” He took a stroke with his starboard oar to keep the boat facing the hill. “Two?”
“Light into the darkness.” Reg paused. “Tennessee Valley Authority. Remember their slogan, ‘The great light hope. Bringing light to the Negroes’?”
Moss shook his head. “Window dressing.”
They were quiet. Water dripped off the blades of the oars into the sea. Reg’s mood was hard to fathom.
“There was a place I used to go to in Berlin,” he said slowly, “in the old American sector. All the time. It was one of those hidden cafés at the bottom of town halls, what they call rathskellers.”
Moss took a stroke.
“There was an American who came in every so often, a soldier.”
“A soldier?”
Reg nodded. “A soldier who never came home.”
“He stayed in Germany.”
Reg exhaled. “Yup.”
“The soldier had liberated the camps. He’d been on one of the first jeeps into Buchenwald, and was there for ten days.”
“Jesus.”
“He told me about those first days, about marching the villagers through the camp, about turning off the ovens, and then he told me about a guard that had run away but that had been captured by the survivors and brought back.
“They brought him into one of the storerooms and handed him a rope. They told him to make a noose. ‘I do not know how,’ he said. They showed him. They told him to put it around his neck, climb onto the table shoved into the center of the room, and hold the end of the rope up to the ceiling.”
Reg was not looking at Moss. He was far away.
“And he did that. The guard stood on the table and held up the rope so it touched the ceiling, and looked down at the survivors, and waited.
“‘And we all knew what we were doing,’ said the soldier. ‘I was standing at the back of the room.’
“Then they told the guard to get down off the table.”
Reg stopped.
“He pissed his pants with relief. He got down off the table, shaking, weeping, and sank to the ground.
“The survivor giving the orders nodded at him. And gently took the noose off the guard’s neck.”
Moss sighed. “And?”
Reg looked at him.
“And climbed onto the table himself and fastened the end of the rope to the hook in the ceiling, tested the knot, and climbed back down.”
“‘Go on, now,’ he said to the guard.”
Moss shuddered.
Reg nodded, looking at him. “‘And why should that death be the one I can’t shake?’ said the American soldier to me.”
“The guard’s?”
Reg nodded. “The guard’s.”
Moss went cold inside.
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Do you know what your sister said to me today?” Reg looked at Moss for the first time.
“Joan?” Moss took a stroke with the left oar.
Reg nodded. “We were talking about this place, and she said, very sweetly, almost reverently—‘Nothing will ever change. Sunlight. Starlight. Drinks on the dock. A single sail out in the bay. It will never change. It seems to promise, “You will not die.” On and on. Like a painting,’ she said. ‘Here you are. As long as the Island stands, we stand. Time never minds.’”
Moss took another stroke.
“She said all that with a deep joy, as though she had in her hand one of the Verities, and I thought to myself, There is the trouble. That verity—nothing will ever change—does not include me. She means well, I know she does. But I cannot hear that nothing will ever change.”
There was a bitterness in Reg’s voice Moss had never heard. He dipped both oars in, leaned forward, and pulled hard. The boat soared. He pulled again.
“But of course it will,” said Moss. “It has to. That’s just Joan speaking. And she’s out there right now with Len.”
“Everyone up there”—Reg pointed up the hill toward the barn—“is so unfailingly polite. Earnest. Good-spirited.”
“So?”
“They are holding their breath. We are,” he said tiredly, “ruining the party.”
“No,” Moss said.
“No?” Reg searched his face. “Look at me honestly and tell me that you aren’t proud to have me here.”
“Proud? Of course I’m proud.” Moss was mystified.
Reg put his hand in the water and drew it sharply back. It was bone cold.
“I don’t want to be a badge of honor worn on the outside,” he said. “I don’t want to be taken up, like knitting, like a dog, un chien de salon, the whole race problem tamed. Because that’s what I imagine them all thinking up there. At the party. A black man can be taken in stride, even taken in hand, because we were all standing there, drinks in our hands, looking at sunsets, singing. We were all standing together.” He shook his head. “I want to be inside; I want to be alongside.”
“You are.” Moss was fervent. “You are. You are the whole—” Thing, he wanted to say. You are more than that.
“Reg,” he went on, “this afternoon I saw it, I saw how you were at the center of it all, and I wrote it. I got it down. The song—the song about all this, about the black man, how you are the new note and the—”
“Listen to me, Moss. We have always been here at the center. Always. It’s only that you’ve just decided to take a look.”
Moss shook his head. “But—”
“And I’m not a goddamned bell. I’m a man.”
Moss gave a laugh that was half a groan. “Damn it, I know that.”
Reg shook his head. “You can’t slip your history, man. That’s what I’m telling you. That’s the story I keep getting, again and again. Those people,” he said, pointing at the island, “your parents—whatever they did, whatever they didn’t do in their lives—that’s what’s in you. No matter what you say, or do—”
Moss shook his head. “Listen to me, Reg. You’re right with me, we’re here. We can make it all happen, we can show people the change that’s coming, that’s possible—”
“Change?” Reg repeated.
The ferocity of his bitterness surprised him. All that he had held back, all that he hadn’t said was directed at the man across from him in the boat.
“You think change comes without change? You think you can open the door and then keep the rooms on the other side exactly the same? Come in, come in, sure—but don’t touch, don’t sit on the furniture. Watch where you’re stepping. That’s not change, man—that’s a dinner party. All the guests come and then all the guests go home.”
Reg saw the expression on Moss’s face and was so weary just then, so tired. He was tired of being the man at the center banging the gong. He wanted—was it too much to ask? He wanted Joan to choose Len. He wanted to ride in this boat, he wanted to walk with Moss arm in arm through the door Moss imagined was open. He wanted—was it always too much?—a happy ending.
“Do you want to know what your other sister said to me?”
Moss shook his head.
“‘You d
on’t marry a Jew,’ she said to me. Change would be your sister marrying Len and your mother rejoicing at the wedding. Change would be the white boys and the black boys going to school together, the same school, and two years later all those boys in jobs, instead of those black boys cleaning the toilets of the girls and boys they walked off the graduation stage with—”
“Then that’s what we have to tell people.”
“People? What people?” Reg thrust. “Black people already know the news, Moss. White people have to face it. And it is a rare man who points to it and says, Look there. Look there at what is between us. Who calls it into the open. Who admits there is a fight and says, Now what?”
Moss sat listening, sick at heart. “But when you say it like that—black people this, white people that—you separate, you draw attention to it, you make it worse.”
“It was already worse,” Reg answered slowly, “before I arrived. America rose out of that handshake in Philadelphia, 1776. That single, simple deal. You give us your signatures to fight the British, we’ll give you your slaves. That is what’s at the bottom of the jar. And some want to remember and some want to forget, but you can’t take a sip and not take it in.”
“But—”
“Black people can’t forget what’s at the bottom, we will never forget what’s at the bottom. But if this country could just say it—say it, say—all right, yes, it’s there—then we can fill the jar, Moss. Then we can start—singing.”
A spasm of pain crossed Moss’s face.
“So help me god, you are a good man.” Reg leaned toward him. “And you mean well. But when you look at me and talk of change, of hope—from on top of an island in Maine—I think, I can’t help but think, He can’t possibly mean me.”
Moss shook his head. “You are wrong.”
“Am I?” And though he could see Moss’s face collapsing, Reg kept going, striking word upon word. “You wanted me to come and see you, warts and all, you said. You wanted me to come and see—you wanted me to absolve you, Moss. I can’t absolve you.”
Moss had gone white in the face of this tirade, the scorn which Reg himself had not felt rising, which lurched now from his chest. But the weight, the intolerable weight of the monster was gone. “I can’t absolve you. I can’t prove that you are good. Do you hear?”
Moss reached for him and put his hands on his shoulders. The fear in his eyes equal to the need.
“Why did you come?”
“Because,” Reg choked. “Because you asked,” he cried. “And because I like you—” He looked at Moss directly. He couldn’t lie. “And because I wanted you to see what I see. And I wanted to see if you could.”
“Is that all this was?” Moss dropped his hands. “Is that what I am to you? Some kind of test?”
Reg hugged himself, wordless in the face of the man in front of him.
Moss set his oar and took a long, violent stroke.
Then again, once, twice. The boat surged forward, gliding silent across the black night. Reg closed his eyes.
“Damn it, Reg.” Moss jammed the oars into the water, jerking the boat to such a sudden stop, Reg had to grab the gunwales. Then Moss stood, throwing his weight in the boat to the left, to the right wanting to shake it, tip it, his eyes on Reg.
“How about seeing what I see? How about that? Look here. Look at us. Damn it, look at me. In this boat.”
“Stop it, man.” Reg clung to the wooden rim. “Stop—”
Moss sat down so suddenly, the boat lurched to the left and then, righting, calmed. The two friends looked at each other, their breath ragged in the night air.
And then they heard shouting.
“Reg!”
It sounded like Len.
“Moss!”
“Mother of god,” Reg breathed, catching sight of Len standing, naked, it looked like, on the rocks.
Moss turned in his seat.
“Moss!” The panic in Len’s voice came clear and loud across the water.
It looked like Len dove in after something in the water, something thrashing and struggling, and then Moss saw it was Joan he was going for, Joan pushing against him and going under, Joan struggling. Goddamn him, Moss thought. Len had taken her swimming.
“I’m coming, Joanie!” Moss dropped to his seat and started rowing as fast as he could, the scene on the rocks hidden by the bow of the boat.
“Get off.” He pulled on the oars as hard as he could. “Get off her, asshole.”
* * *
JOAN COULDN’T BREATHE. Someone was knocking in her head. Was that Moss out there in the boat? Moss, she thought. Moss, and someone else? The boat hovered above the surface of the water like a white ghost floating. She needed Moss. Someone was going to get in. Someone was bursting forward, hurling himself—Moss. She got out, just before the door crashed open, and she fell into the water, in the grip of the seizure. The light in the doorway shone in her eyes and she tried to put her hand in front of them, she tried to cover her eyes, but her hand wasn’t working and it hit against her cheek instead. Hands were lifting her up, no no no, holding her up. Moss! Moss! She tried to call her brother, but the shaking had started and she had to concentrate as her knees gave way, and the water opened and took her.
Len dove again under the frigid black water and grabbed at Joan, writhing just beneath the surface, clawing at the water, her eyes wide open. She heaved and clutched, and jerked away from him just when he’d gotten hold, and slid free as the fit took her body backward. Joan—he reached again—goddamn it, Joan, he was crying, and grabbed her hand this time, and held it fast and yanked her toward him, his lungs exploding, dragging her with him up to the surface as she kicked and flailed against him. He held on to her, struggling to get them onto the rocks, so he could grab her entirely and carry her up. He thought he heard the boat behind him, but he didn’t dare turn around, concentrating on making it to the rocks. It seemed Joan was struggling less, and he risked a look backward and saw her eyes had closed.
“Joan,” he said, coughing. “They’re coming.”
His foot hit on the edge of a rock and he pulled them forward as the other foot caught and he paused and pulled her closer in now that he had something to stand on. She was going limp, as if she were falling asleep. “They’re coming,” he said again, trying to keep his voice calm, as he reached for the rocks and pulled her in, climbing backward, the barnacles cutting his hands and knees. He could see Moss rowing toward them and with an enormous effort, succeeded in getting them both up and out of the water and onto the rocks just at the edge. Moss and Reg were coming. He stood up, thinking to get Joan’s clothes, something to cover her, and turning from the water saw Evelyn standing there. She wore Dickie’s coat, holding it closed at the neck with one hand, and she looked for a minute like a dangerous child, the danger in the single-minded expression on her small features. Carrying one of the boathouse lanterns, she looked ancient to him, the incarnation of all the watchdogs at the gate. Coming fast behind her were Mr. and Mrs. Milton.
He covered himself with his hands and turned back toward Joan to protect her from all those faces.
So he did not see Evelyn coming for him, did not see how she hurled herself at him, giving him a sudden, hard shove, so hard, he lost his balance and tripped, plunging the ten feet straight down and back into the freezing cold. His face slammed into the slope of granite below the water, and his nose snapped, the water pouring into his throat, choking him. He fought against the water, but he couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t pull up; the blood rushed down his throat with the water. He kicked and fought to get back up to the top, panicked at the water pouring down his throat.
Someone grabbed him by the elbow and tugged. He kicked against the hand. Both his arms were seized, and someone swam behind him and was pulling him up. There were arms around him, but his head was pounding and he couldn’t breathe. There were arms around him, yanking him up, back up.
He gasped in the air. He choked and gasped, his chest heaving air, the taste of blood
in his mouth. “You’re all right,” Ogden Milton said to him, his arms around Len. “You’re all right.”
* * *
MOSS LEANED ALL his weight into the oars, pulling and pulling toward the sound of the splashing, pulling with all his strength to get there, sound fallen away, everything fallen except the adrenaline pumping his arms for him. He had to get to Joanie. He had to save her. Nothing else mattered.
“Stop!” Reg was shouting at him, pointing, and then Reg leaped at him to grab the oars.
“Stop, Moss,” he heard his mother shout. “Stop it!”
Moss understood the danger in time and jammed the oars down to stall the boat. His father had Len under the arms and was pulling him onto the rocks, both of them panting and the blood pouring down Len’s face.
“Jesus,” cried Moss.
His mother was kneeling over Joan, her arms on either shoulder, holding her steady and talking to her quietly, trying to cover her daughter’s shivering body with her cardigan. He pulled in and grabbed hold of the rocks, and he and Reg climbed out.
“What happened?” Moss asked. “What the hell happened?”
“Are you all right?” Reg said to Len.
“Nothing happened,” Ogden answered swiftly, the water streaming down his face. “I’m so sorry.”
He looked at Evelyn. Shaking, standing off to the side, she looked back at him and lifted her chin.
“Get Joanie’s clothes,” Kitty instructed Moss without taking her eyes off Joan’s face.
Moss walked back to the edge of the rock, picked up Joan’s shirt and her skirt and brought them all over, looking away from his sister’s nakedness.
Then he went and got Len’s shirt and handed it to him.
Reg put his hand on Len’s shoulder. “Are you okay?”
Len nodded, his eyes on Joan. The fit had passed. No one spoke. Len pulled his shirt over his wet head and shoulders and went for his trousers. Joan’s eyes opened and shut. Slowly, Kitty turned on Len.
