If You Find This

by Matthew Baker

  Zeke marked the map with a silver X next to a tiny brown island in Lake Michigan.

  “The ship sank here, just along this island,” Zeke (forte)said.

  “Which island?” Jordan (forte)said.

  “There isn’t a name for it,” Zeke (forte)said.

  “The island’s unnamed?” I (forte)said.

  “Nobody bothers to name islands as small as that,” Zeke (forte)said.

  Grandpa Dykhouse tapped the X with a thumb.

  “So the key’s there,” Grandpa Dykhouse(mezzo-forte) said.

  “On that island somewhere,” Zeke (forte)said. His jeans were torn from being chased through the tunnels. His shirt was sandy from hiding waiting for us in the dunes. He chewed a lip, measuring the distance between the island and our village with his fingers.

  “Those crates probably weren’t from the actual PAWPAW,” Grandpa Dykhouse(mezzo-forte) said. “Smugglers sailing illegal vessels often would mark their cargo with the name of a legal vessel, to sneak their cargo in and out of harbors.”

  “I have a memory,” Grandpa Rose (forte) said, clenching and unclenching his fists, the blanket hanging from his shoulders, “of your Grandma Rose scrubbing dirt from potatoes, begging me to take a job. A job at a sawmill, a job at a factory, a job anywhere. A job in town. Anything. Begging. But I didn’t. I was selfish. I liked being away. I liked meeting strangers. I liked breaking laws, ducking punches, cities with bars. When I was home, all I thought about was everywhere else. When I was everywhere else, all I thought about was home. She didn’t mind, had never minded, loved me for my troublemaking. But this, she said, was different. A kid would need more than that, a father around, some better life. I can remember her, whatever months pregnant, scrubbing dirt from potatoes. I can see the curtains. I can see the flyswatter. I can see the knuckles of her fingers, the color of her dress, the hair against her neck. But I can’t see her face. Ana, in every memory, her face is missing.” He wrapped himself into his blanket. “Kid, I want to see her face. Will you bring me a photo?”

  “Sorry, but we don’t have any, remember?” I (forte)said.

  He had already forgotten. His whiskers glinted in the gold light of the lantern. The tattoos underneath had almost entirely disappeared. He (piano)sworeunwritable, then (forte) said, “I was the worst father I could have been. A nobody father. We have to find the heirlooms. One good thing.”

  Grandpa Dykhouse hooked his glasses to his sweater.

  “Little sidenote?” Grandpa Dykhouse (forte)said. “We’re out of peas.”

  “Bigger sidenote?” Jordan (forte)said. “Today the newspaper printed your photos. MISSING MEN: EDMOND DYKHOUSE AND MONTE ROSE. The rest home is offering a reward. Probably because my parents are talking about suing if the rest home doesn’t find you.”

  “Biggest sidenote?” I (forte)said. “My house is still for sale. There have already been showings. After there’s been a closing, it won’t matter whether we find the heirlooms. Tomorrow we’re digging for the key.”

  Jordan scratched his head, like he would during math class when something had stumped him.

  “How are we getting to the island if we don’t have a boat?” Jordan (forte)said.

  Zeke gathered the map.

  “We’ll steal one,” Zeke (forte)said.

  FROM THE NOTES OF GRANDPA ROSE

  The first time she told him she loved him, she shouted it from his roof. The second and third and fourth and fifth times she told him she loved him, she whispered it in his ears. She wore his boots and his hats everywhere, carved his name into strangers’ fences, stole him fish from the smokehouse. Monte bought a dress, a light blue color, a loose cotton dress with round wooden buttons and a pair of ruffled pockets. Ana refused to wear anything else, ever.

  There were other things she wanted him to buy her, but that dress was about the only thing he ever did. Instead? He used the money to buy himself a camera, and tobacco, and a deck of cards, and tins of pomade to slick his hair. Now, let’s be clear: She knew how to take care of herself. At the age of seventeen, she was already irrefutably the strongest woman who had ever lived, and possibly the smartest. He was often unsure why she had chosen him exactly, but she had chosen him forever. She didn’t care about the smugglers, didn’t care how often she got to see him, as long as wherever he was he was hers. And he was.

  He can remember that dress perfectly. But her face, her face is murky, all blurry, washed out. He can remember qualities: that the face was beautiful, or transfixing. Defiant somehow, like the face of a feral animal. Absolutely unique. But he can’t remember features: can’t see the size of the eyes, or the shape of the jaw, or the exact intricate configuration of that nose and that brow and those lips and those ears. Can’t see the face. Just sees a blurred nothing, above her dress, as she thumbed through a stack of rumpled dollars, counting his money on the porch. She generally had to count his money for him. Fact is, once he ran out of fingers to count on, he wasn’t much good with numbers.

  Monte said the money was from a job at a factory. Everybody knew the money was from the smugglers. His father believed in him still anyway. His father was unwell, had become bedridden, couldn’t work anymore, could walk but rarely did. Every day his father lay in the bedroom with the curtains drawn against the sun; every night his father lay in the bedroom with the lamps flickering against the dark; his father missed doing carpentry, terribly, and was dreadfully afraid of dying.

  That face? Sure, that face, he remembers. Those drooping earlobes; that colossal nose, vast nostrils; woolly black eyebrows, grown wild like weeds after about a century of rain; those worn-out eyelids; the way those eyes looked at things, widely, kindly, as if waiting patiently for everything that seemed ugly in the world to reveal some hidden beauty. His father wore a knit cap in bed, had to drape himself with quilts to keep warm. Ana liked to sit in there on a stool and peel apples with a knife. Ana could put anybody at ease: She got his father to gossip about neighbors, to confess to a weakness for chocolate, to reminisce about building the house. She got his father, who never laughed, to not only laugh but even snort. She adored his father, the snort especially. He’s going to do such great things, his father always said, chatting with her. She would nod, pleased, seemed to think the same thing. Just like you did! she would say, throwing her arms out at the house. My greatest accomplishment, his father would brag, blushing. Quickly, his father would admit, I’m proud of every inch of this place. In the hallway, Monte would think, you built the worst house in the world. Monte liked to prowl the hallway, hiding, while his father chewed the apples. He avoided being in the room. Whenever he stood by the bedside, his father would clasp his wrists, and stare into his eyes, and ask him to swear to guard the heirlooms with his life. Swear, his father said. Okay, he said. He would try to sneak off, but his father would clasp his wrists tighter, and make him swear again. Someday your family might need that money, his father said. I don’t even have a family, he said. Swear, his father said. Okay, okay, okay, he said. But you’re not going to die, he said. Because he honestly believed his father never would.

  At sunset he would trek to the dunes and watch for the boats. Nights the boats came, the smugglers would splash ashore, the brims of their fedoras bent by the wind, their overcoats soaked with spindrift. Gruff wary men with waxed mustaches, velvety accents. They would make jokes without smiling, watching the dunes for police. Their eyes, they looked at things meanly, narrowly, as if waiting anxiously for everything that seemed safe in the world to reveal some hidden menace.

  Fact is, though, the smugglers were actually quite friendly. Once they were sure the dunes were clear, the men would relax. Tugging canvas tarps from their cargo, they would gripe about the weather, babble about bets they had won or lost, parrot each other’s speech, sing chanteys, chuckling. At seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, Monte was half the age of any of them. Genuinely, they liked having a local kid to talk to. They all were troublemakers, too, among the biggest in Chicago. They competed to amaze him, te
lling anecdotes about life there. The city was changing: skyscrapers leaping into the air, pavement leaping across the roads. Now films had sound.

  The gangsters brewed the liquor, then paid the men to smuggle the bottles to speakeasies along the coast, each bottle marked with single or double or triple exes. Nights there weren’t bodies, Monte would just help unload crates. But, most nights, there were bodies. Honestly, that’s how many people the gangsters were killing those years; even in a city that size there wasn’t anywhere to hide all the bodies. The gangsters were strangling rival bootleggers, shooting police officers, bombing the homes of politicians. These days bodies get dumped in Michoacan, by the narcos, but those days bodies got dumped in Michigan, by the bootleggers. The bottom of the lake wasn’t deep enough. The middle of an island wasn’t remote enough. The gangsters wanted the bodies buried where nobody would ever look. Along the coast, in the nobody towns. The smugglers got paid to sneak the bodies across the lake. Monte got paid to bury the bodies. His wages came in envelopes addressed to his alias, The Little Narentine. He never knew why the people had been killed. They could have been anybody. Now they were missing men. The smugglers bought him a clunky rusted truck; he drove the truck along the coast, nobody town to nobody town, burying the bodies where he had been told. Some of the bodies he had to bury in his own village.

  He has a memory of a golden-toothed smuggler handing him a slip of paper with a list of names, a name for each town, the name of whoever was buried there where he would have to bury the others.

  He has memories of building bonfires on the beach with Ana, of licking petoskey stones together to bring out the honeycomb patterns of fossilized coral.

  He has a memory from his nineteenth birthday of making promises again to his father.

  And afterward of his father coughing spots of blood into a handkerchief.

  And later that night of trekking to the dunes.

  It was dusk. The boats had landed already. The smugglers were stacking crates along the shore. Moonshine, firewater, spirits. No bodies, that night. Monte stepped from the woods, chewing a stalk of beach grass. He remembers, lingering a moment, alone at the crest of the dunes, just watching the smugglers, admiring their grumpy camaraderie, enjoying their hoarse singing. Sucking flavor from the beach grass. Feeling very content. Then he saw others step from the woods, farther along the dunes—men gripping nightsticks, their coats pinned with stars. The beach grass dropped from his mouth. The men, the police, surged down the dunes toward the smugglers. Monte stepped backward. He raised his hands to his mouth to holler a warning, when behind him somebody spoke his name. He spun around; a cop with a nightstick was standing there in the trees. Along the shoreline the smugglers were shouting. Some of the smugglers were crouched behind crates firing pistols at the police. Some of the smugglers were splashing for the boats. The cop said his name again, motioned at him to lie in the sand. Instead he slugged the cop in the mouth, tripped, stumbled sideways, staggered into the woods. He had never, never, never made trouble on this scale before. His shirt was torn. His knuckles were bleeding. He felt terrified, and panicked, and also happy. He was making another getaway. But this getaway he didn’t want to make alone.

  There was a blur of gates and birdbaths and flags and lamplit windows as he ran into town, then hopped the fence he was looking for. He threw a stone at a window. Ana dropped from the window into the road. He told her what had happened. He told her what had to happen. She didn’t have to stop to think, had already decided, was nodding yes, yes, yes. They ran from her house to his house and jumped into the truck. But what about your dad, she said. No time, he said. Then he remembered the heirlooms.

  He emptied the cabinet, pocketing the music box, then lugging the other heirlooms to the bathroom. He heard his father calling his name. He ignored his father, dragged the bathtub away from the window, popped the floorboards. He hid the other heirlooms there, then shoved the bathtub back over the floorboards again. The music box he wanted for himself. His father couldn’t guard the heirlooms, ill as his father was; the other heirlooms were safer hidden under the floor. Would he have had time to say goodbye? Maybe, but he didn’t take it. Upstairs came the sound of a muffled coughing. Downstairs came the sound of the door slamming. Monte jumped back into the truck, and Ana jumped back into the truck, and together they drove into the night, the stock markets crashing around them into all the seas of the world.

  A NUMBER IN THE UPPER PENINSULA

  I worked some overtime this week,” my dad (forte)said.

  I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t say anything.

  “That should make things easier, there, once the paycheck comes,” my dad (forte)said.

  I heard television (piano)noises through the phone.

  I was starting to understand that he was calling from somewhere he couldn’t come back from. No one could find jobs in our village anymore. He had no way home.

  “School alright?” my dad (forte)said.

  I fingered the piano’s keys, playing the ghost of a song, pressing each key so softly that it made no noise whatsoever.

  “School’s okay,” I (mezzo-piano)said.

  I waited for him to say it, but it never came.

  EQUATIONS

  One of my theories is that, for everyone you know, there’s a word or a phrase that, if you say it to them, it will destroy them. It’s what Grandpa Dykhouse calls your True Name.

  “It appears in countless stories worldwide,” Grandpa Dykhouse (forte)said.

  “Brace yourselves! I know that look! King Gunga is about to enter librarian trance state level eleven and unleash his full power!” Jordan (forte)shouted.

  “Like the story of Rumpelstiltskin, when the queen can’t save her baby until she learns the name of the spirit,” Grandpa Dykhouse (mezzo-forte)said, ignoring Jordan. “The story of Tarandando. The story of Titteliture. Or stories of changelings—do you know what a changeling is? In some stories, spirits will sneak into a house to steal a newborn child. Then the spirits will leave behind a fake child that looks just like the one that was stolen. That’s the changeling—the fake child. But here’s the trick. The spirits can only steal a child that hasn’t been named yet—the spirits don’t have any power over a child that has been named.”

  “Or like the story of Mr. Mxyzptlk,” Jordan (mezzo-piano)added, but no one knew what he was talking about.

  Grandpa Dykhouse says a spirit can be defeated if you know its True Name. But I’ve known for years that a person can be defeated the same way.

  It’s like the math.

  Since first grade, I’ve had the same equations.

  Nicholas Funes = Boy With Zero Friends.

  Nicholas Funes = Boy Who No One Would Want To Kiss.

  Nicholas Funes = Boy Whose Mother Wishes He Had Never Grown Older, Whose Father Never Says I Love You.

  My name is Nicholas Funes, but that isn’t my True Name. To destroy me, you would only have to (pianissimo)whisper into my ears, “You are friendless, unloved, unlovable, unwanted.” Then you’d have all the power over me that you could ever want.

  A DUEL WITH THE ISAACS

  In the morning I ran outside to talk to my brother. The wind had torn the last of the leaves from the other trees—all that was left were the birds’ nests, made from the trees’ twigs, tucked into the trees’ branches, the nests that had been hidden there before the leaves had fallen. It was like suddenly you could see into the trees’ heads, and the nests were the trees’ thoughts, hanging there exposed. But my brother was a pine tree—he never lost his needles—so his nests stayed hidden. I loved that about him. You never knew what he was thinking until he said it aloud.

  I plucked notes that meant, BROTHER WE ARE GETTING CLOSE TO FINDING THE HEIRLOOMS AND SAVING THE HOUSE SO THAT WE WILL NOT HAVE TO LEAVE YOU.

  IF I COULD HELP I WOULD HELP, my brother’s song said.

  YOU DON’T HAVE TO. I’M THE OLDER ONE. THAT’S WHY I’M HERE, my song said.

  BUT THEN WHY AM I HERE, WHAT DO
I DO, I SHOULD BE HELPING SOMEHOW, my brother’s song said.

  My brother (fermata)thrashed with the wind, flinging pinecones, throwing a tantrum. Younger brothers didn’t like getting helped. Sometimes even when they needed it they didn’t want it. A pair of squirrels scrabbled into a pine, (glissando)screeching.

  My brother quit thrashing.

  DO YOU REMEMBER, WHEN WE WERE YOUNGER, THE MORNING OUR FATHER TOOK YOU AWAY CARRYING FISHING POLES AND TINFOIL LUNCHES? my brother’s song said.

  I didn’t.

  I REMEMBER, my brother’s song said.

  The sky was still starry.

  I REMEMBER YOU LEAVING, my brother’s song said.

  I started to pluck more notes, but my brother spoke again.

  I HATE BEING STUCK HERE, my brother’s song said.

  Before school, I went walking through the neighborhood with my mom, helping to search for Grandpa Rose. I usually avoided going, because helping to search for someone when you know exactly where that person is can be minorly nerve-racking, and also can make you feel horrible. We walked toward downtown, as far as the stone bridge, and then back home. My mom kept (staccato)whistling, trying to mimic birds’ songs—maybe trying to call the birds, maybe trying to call Grandpa Rose. Her whistle was totally off-key. As we trudged up the driveway, she finally quit trying.

  “You don’t have any other memories of Grandpa Rose?” I (mezzo-forte)said.

  The door (forte)whooshed shut. My high-tops had tracked dirt clods into the house. My mom saw the dirt, opened the closet for a broom.

  “I remember wanting a normal father. Somebody who mowed the grass, chatted with neighbors, washed cars in the driveway. Came to dance recitals. Was home at night. Grandpa Rose wasn’t. He was never home. When kids asked about him, I said that he was dead,” my mom (mezzo-piano)said. “Then, one day, Grandpa Rose appeared at school at the fence. Wearing the same clothes, carrying the same suitcase, he always wore and carried. Like a mirage. He was away, hadn’t been home now for months. We were on the swing set when he appeared. I remember my friends soaring past me, forward, backward. My swing had stopped. I hadn’t noticed I had stopped kicking.” She started (pianissimo)sweeping the dirt. “I ran to the fence to talk to him. He gave me something. A toy, a book, I don’t remember. Afterward, my friends asked about who he was. I said he was an old neighbor.”