by Steve Amick
He remembered that when they returned to shore, they were hand in hand, and it wasn’t straight back to the bottom of the stairs but veering a little to the south, to what was now a neighbor’s beach with an elaborate dock and some kind of nylon windsocks like carnival flags that flapped in the dark. But back then, it was just further unmarked beach where they could move back against the grassy curve of the cliff there, into the lee, both of them muttering how they needed to get out of the wind, both of them knowing full well what they were actually stepping away from.
Even now, he could see the image of her, afterward, standing, knees bent, in the surf, one hand hoisting her soggy slip, exposing to the moonlight and to him that place he’d never seen before in his life, her other hand scooping up water, splashing the blood away. She was beaming peacefully, her head tipped, hair hanging loose to one side, watching him watching her. He remembered how he couldn’t breathe, how he sobbed and she seemed quietly confused by that, her joy broken by concern, and waded back to shore to touch his face, and they prayed together over what had happened. The shame he felt!—not for being with her, for she was beyond a doubt another part of him, some essential element that had been missing from his person and, he hoped, he was also something that had been absent in her. But he was ashamed for letting it occur in this way, for behaving like a regular Joe, for being cheap about it.
He’d once written a sermon, second year of seminary, that won that year’s Witherspoon Award, and it was titled “The Sin of Being Normal.” The gist was that it’s the “regular Joes” who blithely fall into sin; that nonconformists are better suited for leading a righteous life because they are predisposed to questioning everything, even and especially their own actions. And what better way to weigh sin, to scrutinize it, and thus avoid it? A radical thought in Joe McCarthy’s dust cloud, to champion nonconformity.
It was not unlike the time he got rip-roaring drunk and later determined: that’s just not me. Neither was rolling around in the sand with jailbait, rutting like two beasts more interested in soft pink tissue than brain tissue and heart.
After they prayed over it, they decided they had something beautiful but it was not to be touched again. Not until marriage. And they didn’t do it again. Not for two whole years, till 1959, when he was twenty-six, graduating from seminary with a position as an enlisted chaplain on the Wurtsmith Air Force Base, across the state, just above the Thumb, and she was the far more acceptable age of nineteen.
And then Ben was born soon after, in 1960—Ben Webster Reecher, because they went to see him play the night they figured they’d conceived. And Abbey followed in ’63, and just as it looked like he was bound for a military life—which was a far more conformist life than he imagined ever falling into when he crafted that sermon about the “regular Joe” a decade before—an opportunity came their way that seemed heaven-sent, a sign, a way back to that special, water-trapped town where they’d walked into each other’s lives, that dark shore where they’d first truly been man and wife.
It was 1969, a year in which the rest of the world seemed to be shuddering, but they were moving, with their scant belongings, back in time, to that cramped, outdated parsonage where only the shelf paper ever changed. And the congregation welcomed them, gathered round them, seemed so glad to have them, excited by their youth, their newness, wanting it to touch them and bless them back. They fawned over Mary that first day and teen girls swooped in as free baby-sitters, enough to handle five times the kids, taking them out into the yard, showing them the newly painted swing set and the river and the whitecaps on Lake Michigan beyond. There was almost a buzz as they flitted like cartoon bluebirds, preparing the nest. There was an elaborate fondue, with several cheeses, and everyone dug in as they darted about the house, helping unpack. They were told to keep the fondue set: it was a housewarming present. Hal Markham, who was gone now—liver cancer in ’84—donated a brand-new mattress, right out of his store window, and the men all helped carry it in and the women all giggled with Mary, whispered that they wanted their first night in the house to be special.
The secret was, despite all that, they didn’t spend the night there. After all that toting and unpacking, that whirlwind day full of new people and new sights and charging around the neighborhood, learning which dogs to pet and which to avoid, Ben and Abbey were out like Lazarus. This was a safe town, they felt, where nothing would happen. And so they slipped away and spent the night back at the bootlegger’s place, down on the beach, snug in the lee of the cliff, mostly talking, in low, awed tones, about the kind of life they were about to have, and the many lives their lives would touch, and what a wonderful place this was they were about to call home.
AND TONIGHT IT DIDN’T LOOK MUCH DIFFERENT than it had those earlier times, the smooth gloam of the beach and the darker roll of the waves and the distant glow—though much dimmer now, since the lighthouse collapse—far up the shore, at Sumac Point. The water seemed colder to his toes tonight, but he chalked that up to his trepidation and the scolding monitoring of his more mature mind. And the fact that he was alone. How much easier it would be to convince himself to turn away and go back home, with no one to prod him and tease him and double-dare him, no one for whom he could show off.
But no—he had to do this.
He was so absolutely, completely alone, it felt like he should yell something, or announce something—proclaim his sins out into the night, make a confessional of the crashing waves. He wasn’t sure if he should be talking to Mary now or his Savior or whom and so he kept his mouth shut and told himself he was just going swimming.
The force of the waves was stronger than he imagined as he teetered out through the surf. And there were rocks underfoot, sporadic booby traps that collaborated with the waves to knock him off-balance. One large breaker caught him off-guard and he fell to one knee, stumbling, his hands splayed for support underwater, and he felt his shin scrape and a fingernail bend back against a rock. He got a big mouthful and thought for a second he would drown right there, not two yards from shore, but he sputtered and cleared his passageway of water and got himself back up on two legs.
Several more lurching, Frankenstein steps and he was out over his head and clear of the danger of the rocks. He paddled in place for a moment, turning his back to the whitecaps, and squinted back at the shore. He could just see the spire of the bootlegger’s place, poking up above the cliff, could even imagine he saw someone back there, down on the beach—a couple huddled in the shadows, lovers, teens—and then he turned around and started swimming, a sharp-elbowed crawl, heading toward the deeper dark.
He’d forgotten how hard it was to swim in the dark when the waves were coming fast. There was no way to see them and gauge their height or time his breathing between them. Lake Michigan could not be described as calm tonight, and he marveled at the amount of activity that could be going on out here, with no human witness other than himself—how stirred up and wild it was and yet no one was there to confirm it was happening. The waves were whitecapping, cresting, the pounding roar a rhythmic hush in his ears, like a cradling mother lullabying, swing-lowing, sweet-charioting.
His body made only crude approximations of the motions he once knew. The strokes he made felt ludicrous. His timing was off and he got a mouthful of water and then another. And then the sobbing came, and more water in the mouth, because his breathing was off, too, ill-timed against the waves. But he kept going, struggling to put more distance between himself and the shore. “Oh God,” he said, out loud, in a voice he barely recognized. It was the voice of someone in pain; a person who would normally come to him for help and now it was coming out of his own mouth. And then he saw, or thought he saw, a thin flash of light. But his eyes, pounded by a wave, squeezed shut and flickered against the water, and he wasn’t sure what he’d seen.
He kept trying to pull forward, but his arms were weak now, no match for the waves, and so he treaded water, dog-paddling and gasping, churning in a circle as if caught in a whirlpool. Just
getting my bearings, he told himself. Just catching my breath. I’m going to keep going. I’m going to do this . . . But now it was all mixed up. He wasn’t clear which way was up, what was water, what was the black sky; if he was slipping under or simply besieged by pummeling waves.
And yes, there were lights. He burst out with a cry of laughter at the sight of them and got another mouthful of water in return. He’d expected lights, joyful lights, and they washed down upon him from on high, a white, shuddering light and he reached for it, his body sinking, down, away, as his arms came up, reaching for heaven.
79
JANEY WAS ON DUTY when the sensors went off at the bootlegger’s place, so she drove out there to have a look. It was probably a deer or large raccoon setting it off, but Hatchert had promised the real estate guy, Barry Self, they’d hop up and check it out every time the stupid thing went off.
The sensors were new, hidden at key spots along the driveway ever since the night earlier in the summer when kids smashed a window in the basement servants’ entry and broke in. Personally, Janey thought the sensors were stupid. Whoever eventually bought the place—if anyone ever did—would certainly have plenty to fix up or modernize, so the damage done by a few trespassing teens would be a drop in the bucket. It wasn’t like the place was anywhere near its Cliffhead glory days. Besides, they hadn’t stolen anything or vandalized anything last time—other than the door. She was sure it was just a boy and girl looking for a place to do it. She’d found a condom wrapper in the middle of the upstairs ballroom. But not the actual used condom, which made her feel they weren’t rotten kids, whoever they were. They might break a little glass and have sex in an abandoned mansion, but they practiced safe sex and they didn’t leave the gross condom lying around for people to find.
This time, when she pulled into the sweeping turnaround, circling the long-dry fountain, her lights caught the reflection of taillights and she thought, Okay, either more teen shenanigans or fishermen . . . The car looked familiar—a late-eighties Buick. She ran through the mental list of local fishermen who parked their cars in various favorite spots around town at different times, depending on what was running when. Though those fishing guys usually worked the river or Roger’s lake . . .
Oh my God, she thought, dismayed at the way her mind was working. Lake Meenigeesis, I mean. It’s not Roger’s fucking lake . . .
Anyway, fishing the shore of Lake Michigan, in the middle of the night, that would be a little odd. Pivoting the side spot, she flashed it around the car: either empty or they were keeping their heads down, hoping she’d go away. It could be some fisherman’s kid, on a hot date or a dare. Or somebody had boosted one of the old fishing guys’ cars, though there had been no cars reported stolen, joyrides or otherwise, for most of the year. Then she realized why she was thinking fisherman and knew she was way off: it was the little stylized fish symbol in chrome on the side of the trunk lid. It meant Christian, of course, not I subscribe to the Orvis catalogue.
This was Reverend Gene’s car.
She climbed out of the cruiser and she could hear it now, the music coming from the dash. He’d left the radio on, some sort of woman crooning jazz, sad and velvety like waves. Certainly it would run down his battery and then how would he get home? Something wasn’t right.
She thought of the big to-do over some sermon he made recently. Some folks were outraged. They said he wasn’t stable anymore.
Grabbing her big Maglite, she moved toward the crash of the lake, standing at the top of the steep steps that led down to the beach, and swept the solid beam down below. “Reverend Gene?” she called, several times. She told herself maybe it wasn’t loud enough to be heard, but knew it was. The Maglite caught something wetly splayed near the water’s edge, possibly pants. She’d have to go down there. She might have to radio in the Coast Guard boys for help, maybe a chopper search, but for now, she would have to do this herself.
She started down, a small acidic ache building in the center of her chest—a bad feeling about what she would find, or not find. But she told herself that the one consoling thing was that it was her shift tonight, that she was here to face this thing, not an outsider, a man who never knew Reverend Gene, wasn’t held in his hands as a newborn at the baptismal font, never sat at his feet for the children’s sermon or heard him belt out a slightly syncopated “Amazing Grace” through lungs that might now be filling with water. This was a thing for her; what she was supposed to be doing; the reason, after all, she was here.
80
HE DROVE UP to Camp Grayling on Saturday. Landry met him at the gatehouse, dressed in his fly vest and fishing cap and driving his own pickup, with an aluminum skiff in the bed. He said he was heading over to the Au Sable as soon as he got Roger set up. Roger called him Colonel Potter and Landry slugged him lightly in the solar plexus, then got in and led him around behind the administration buildings and the barracks and the gym where he taught the various pool classes, and then the basketball courts and the motor pool and all the rest, to a series of man-made hummocks in the earth, like the ancient mounds found among the Plains peoples. There was a fenced-off demolition range and a windowless shack, all bunkered with sandbags. They got out and Landry introduced him to the corporal on duty, then Roger stepped in to check out the inventory.
The smell hit him first. That fecund, diatomaceous musk like motor oil, so familiar. He hadn’t smelled plastique in years and yet it did as it always had, taking him first back to that smell of cleaning guns, his Uncle Jimmy Two-Hands showing him how to maintain the old gallery gun after bagging rabbits. And playing with clay in art class and rubbing his boots with neat’s-foot oil and the way it cured on the old woodstove, smoldering, one breath away, it seemed, from total combustion. Then motor oil and the service station he’d worked two summers, back when they really gave service—oil, air, windows, Green Stamps and a smile. And then, inevitably, sadly, the smell of the demo shack in Rach Soi and the unwashed greasy hair of Coots and Miller.
It never failed to surprise him, how that oily smell of plastique carried. Bomb-sniffing dogs did not impress him, not with that waft hitting him like a hard shove down memory lane. Jesus . . . It was all packaged tight and proper, of course, in blocks and sheets, way across the room from the coils of det wire and the caps and the rest of it; everything clearly labeled and separated by dividers that, frankly, wouldn’t do shit if the place really blew. Still, it was a pretty neatly organized shack, all in all.
Behind him at the door, he heard Landry say, in a low voice to the corporal, “This guy was a SEAL in Nam—canal stuff. I don’t think you need to hover. Get me?” So the corporal went back to the stoop to read something, probably a skin mag, and Landry left him to it, saying he’d say goodbye now; that he’d probably still be out fishing when Roger signed out off the base. Roger grunted, still trying to get a handle on what he was looking at, inventory-wise.
What was he looking at? None of the labels seemed familiar . . . The thing is, it wasn’t like he’d been subscribing all these years to Explosives Today. He didn’t go to demolition conventions or sit in chat rooms with chemists and paramilitary types. Other than the stump for Reenie Huff and the Petersons’ jet-skis (and dock), both of which he jerry-rigged with clumsy homemade materials, he’d successfully avoided all this for decades. Some expert, he thought. It’s amazing I’m not mistaken more often for Alfred Nobel . . .
Okay, it maybe looked different, but he told himself to hold on a second. The camp wouldn’t be getting state-of-the-art stuff. This had to be the same old stuff he’d known before, only with different packaging, different classification numbers. He saw the letters RDX and thought, okay, that’s C-4. I know what that is.
But a few things had definitely changed. For one thing, along with the claymores and plastique bricks and flexible Detasheet—all recognizable C-4 explosives—there was something else there stamped PETN, which he took to be Semtex. He knew very little about Semtex but understood it was used only for commercial demos a
nd by terrorists, that the U.S. military didn’t use it. The corporal’s explanation sounded a little sketchy: “Colonel knows a guy, I think. I think on account of we’re Reserves, not regulars, he can purchase some stuff through his own channels, not the Pentagon or whatever, so he buys some of this, his budget gets stretched a little further. Plus, he thinks we should start to get familiar with it, too. Get more ‘well-rounded’ or something . . .”
He saw now that it wasn’t a skin mag the kid was reading but a paperback novel, something about terrorists blowing something up. Nice, Roger thought. Guy’s smack-dab in the center of Hemingway country here, instead he fills his head with that Hollywood fantasy crap . . .
Outside, there was the log bunker where they set off the charges—a low sandbagged trench, not unlike a baseball dugout, except topped with a roof of knotty pine logs and camo mesh tarp and fitted out with a “hell box,” where the switches were actually thrown. Then there was the demo range, a hard-packed grassless field, the no-man’s-land between the bunker and the charges. At the end of the range, about two hundred meters back, there was a ditch, lined with tattered polyurethane to help retain the water. He went over and inspected. They’d set up some obstacles, sections of telephone pole or maybe pilings from an old dock, for him to experiment on. They’d already filled the ditch, from a hose snaking back to the bunker. It looked like about a meter deep of muddy water. He thought maybe they had a tank or a water hole somewhere on the base for the deeper stuff, the more advanced dive stuff that people thought of when they thought SEALs, but this would do for today.
