“You know, you look like shit,” the bartender said.
“Why, thanks,” John Berry said, and laughed awkwardly. He watched the beer sign left of the ice machine and slowly rubbed his palms against his knees. “There was this beauty queen in Norfolk,” he started.
The bartender tucked a pencil behind his ear. “Is this some sleazy joke?”
“Nope,” John Berry said. “I saw her in the mall. Standing in front of some formal-wear store passing out coupons. She had on this sequined dress that kind of shook. I sat on the edge of the fountain to watch her. I half thought she'd rise up and the ceiling would split open or else she'd run over to the falling water, dive, and become some kind of a mermaid or something.”
“We don't see ‘em like that around here,” the bartender said.
“No. It was like she walked off the TV.” Smoke spiraled up from the glass ashtray and the TV was turned low to soaps. Light fell in squares on the wood bar, across John Berry's shoulders, one side of his face, and on his arm lifting the glass.
“You off today?” the bartender said.
John Berry watched the bubbles break loose and float fast to the top of his beer. “Yeah, well, half day today. We pulled in at twelve and I walked off. Hitched a ride with three kids in a rusty VW. I could see the road through little holes under my feet.”
The bartender shook his head. “So they just let you—”
“Tell me something. Who's she taking up with?” John Berry said.
The bartender picked up his empty glass. “I don't tell men who look as wild as yourself anything about their former women,” he said. “All I do is pour the beers.” He put the warm beer glass in a sink of water and John Berry heard it gently hit bottom.
“You can tell me who she's screwing,” John Berry said, lifting off the stool.
“I haven't seen her,” the bartender said evenly, drawing him another beer. “But I hear she's with that short-order cook from the Trolley.”
“That long-hair,” John Berry said. “For God's sake.” He sat back on his stool.
“If you're down to make trouble,” the bartender said, setting down the beer, “I'd think twice.” He held out an open palm. “Look,” he said. “Just because your sand castle washes down is no reason—”
“My goddamn life is not sand.” John Berry clenched his beer, foam slipping over his fingers, and took it to the back table. He shouted behind him, “Just bring ‘em to me when you see I'm empty-because that's your job.”
* * *
As he lifted the delicate spines from the flounder fillets that would be tonight's special, Birdflower daydreamed about trout fishing and how the first time he went he had waded in hip-high rubber down Black River in Michigan. Like any other hunter, he had searched, concentrating on dark patches of water. He could see them waving their tails in slow motion, cool pebbles on their bellies, giving a wide fish yawn. It had been his first time fly-fishing. He'd flipped the rod above his head, made it dance, and then, as his father told him, let the line drop just so, barely stinging the surface. Ahead, in the stream, his father looked over his shoulder and, as if from another world, smiled. And that was when he realized how alone he was and would probably always be. How the whole point of fishing was solitude. How his father had waited until he was old enough, until he saw him lying alone in his bedroom, eyes to the plaster swirls of the ceiling. He was himself, not his grade in school, his family, or his father. It was then that he realized he stood, taking up only the space—in the stream, on the land, and in the air—that he did.
“Six orders of strawberry pie to go,” the owner shouted, fishing hat held at his hip.
Birdflower opened the fridge door and took out a pie of whole berries floating in red gelatin, molded by graham cracker crust. He cut each slice, snuggled them on Styrofoam plates, and covered them with Saran Wrap. They looked like road kills, Birdflower thought, watching the owner bag them and call out the window.
All day today he'd been thinking about Emily. He remembered when he'd heard the rumor that she swam nude every morning out at the point. One day, just after sunrise, he hid himself in the dunes. Sea oats blew figure eights that rustled against him. He watched her hold her hands up to the sun and splash up walls of slap-dash water. Her face changed continuously, smiles into whispers widening to laughs. He watched as she somersaulted and twisted. It was then that he fell half in love with her, and decided he wanted her for himself.
The owner stepped around the corner.
“The rush is over; you can clear out of here,” he said, pushing his hat back on his bald head. He looked at him hard a minute. “I just want to warn you. These island guys. They're different from you or me. When they were growing up, they never saw cities with one-way streets or highways where you had to stay in your lane. You know what I mean? They've never seen a parking cop, a paddy wagon, or a big state pen from a car window. You've heard them . . . they all think they're pirates.”
“With no brains,” Birdflower laughed. He took out his cigarettes from his shirt pocket and checked to see how many were left. “When's the last time you had a girl?”
The owner winked. “Besides my wife, you mean? Oh, one hundred, maybe two hundred years.”
Birdflower smiled and opened the door into the dull sunlight. He walked out onto the back porch.
“Okay,” the owner called after him. “All I'm saying is those fellows aren't for messing with.”
“Uh-huh,” Birdflower said. He unbuttoned his shirt and pulled one of the cigarettes out of the pack with his teeth. To him John Berry seemed almost comical, living on the ferry and existing on six-packs and vending machine candy. Birdflower shaded his eyes. He shouldn't have thrown the bottle, but God knows he had his reasons. Birdflower puffed his dangling cigarette and arched against the boards. He thought he understood. He knew Emily's body and how you wanted to climb into it. She had a lazy way that made everyday life fluid and easy. He pushed a cheek against the cooling weathered wood. Still, the bottom line was that only savages cut women. He flicked his cigarette to the sand and took the steps by twos, walking quickly towards Paolo's for a couple after-work beers.
* * *
The bar had filled—a guitar player sang Jackson Browne songs on the raised stage, and the waitress was lighting candles at each table. John Berry burped quietly. His empty basket, chips and pickle, rustled as he reached for crumbs. He was going through all the cottages on the island, remembering curtains, front yards, birdbaths or planters, trying to fade the nausea and loneliness of being back to a place you know completely but feel a stranger to. He was thinking of a time when he was a kid and he and his younger brother—who now lived off the island and was continually coming for vacations with some bookish woman who hated the sun but loved the people and wrote down everything obsessively in bound journals—had collected every can and bottle on the whole island. They nagged their father to drive to spots way up the beach road that they couldn't ride their bikes to. He remembered trading in these bottles and ordering from the back of Life magazine with the money. The ad showed a boy with a buzzcut and a happy face in an air-propelled minicar. When it came, they spent days assembling it, careful of every weight-conscious detail. The day finally came, and John Berry and his brother carried it out to the flat grass in the backyard all the time talking about the Wright brothers. They flipped a coin and it was his brother who solemnly stepped in and ignited the engine, and for one brief boyhood moment John Berry saw him, shoulders and head above the floating contraption and the slight lift and pause on that morning so many summers ago.
Over the bar the TV flashed a vampire movie. Dracula passed through a hanging fern. John Berry watched the count's cape flutter, blood dripped from his lips. He felt Emily's lips on his neck, then the tug and pull, till he was dizzy and his eyes would roll white. John Berry's head jerked to where Birdflower was ordering a beer with a nod at the bar. That long-hair was skinny; frying burgers didn't give you muscles. He could kill him if he wanted.
&
nbsp; The bartender pointed back and Birdflower glanced over his shoulder as if alone at night and hearing footsteps.
People around him quieted, looked back, and shifted nervously in their seats. One woman took her baby from the high chair to her lap. The bartender walked over and said, “No bar fights. I swear I'll call the sheriff in a heartbeat.”
John Berry stared dead-eyed at his beer. “Tell that hippie I won't touch him. I just want to know a few things.”
“I'll pass the message on,” the bartender said.
“Before you shits got here, either raising your motels or working in them, this place was real nice.” John Berry sat across from Birdflower, who listened, his eyes tied to the tiny reflection of himself in his bottle. “I grew up in a house on Howard Street. You know what happened? Some idiot bought it from my mother. Painted it yellow. And is calling it the Canary Guest Cottage.”
“Why'd you throw the bottle?” Birdflower said.
“There's not a person I see in the winter months crossing that I don't know,” John Berry continued.
Through straggles of loose hair, Birdflower was looking him over.
“If you think this has nothing to do with you, asshole, you're wrong.”
Birdflower stood up. “Man, you're nuts.”
“Sit down,” John Berry said, standing and pushing him back into his chair. The bartender made a warning sign. John Berry held up his hand. “Okay, okay,” he said.
Birdflower stood. “Any other words of wisdom you'd like to lay on me before I go.”
Creepy Dracula music played and John Berry threw back his head like a crazy person. “She'll leave you, too,” he said. “You fucking guru.”
* * *
Alone on the road Birdflower counted his ribs carefully like a child doing scales. Headlights flashed in a parade of beach jeeps and trucks heading to the bar. He stuck his hands deep in his pockets and walked barefoot in the loose sand at the side of the road. He lost his balance and fell. Sharp gravel pushed into his palms and his knees grated against the asphalt. Standing, he brushed his hands and ran barefoot toward the restaurant.
Hidden by the low cedars near the storage shed, he watched her. The bright lights of the kitchen showed her arm ladling soup. He saw her face muted behind the screen's haze.
Nothing was wrong. Safe in the kitchen, she was working for Neal, who had an old boyfriend here for the weekend. She was even dressed in the cutoffs he had left wedged down in the covers of her bed. Birdflower lit a cigarette. They were going together to Norfolk in a few days. Things would settle. She was with him, not John Berry, who was just an ignorant old island boy way out of his league.
It was obvious to Birdflower that she didn't want John Berry, that her fascination with the backward lives of the islanders was over. Though he hadn't known her long, Birdflower convinced himself that they had similar desires, and that he was better suited for her because he understood free love.
Gnats circled his head: she would stay with him. Birdflower watched her put onions in an unseen frying pan—heard the snap and sizzle and imagined the blue gas flame. Moving back into the shadows, he watched her step out and head for the walk-in. Behind the veil of cold smoke she chose things. When she came out she gazed at the night sky. Birdflower looked up with her at a star showing through moving clouds.
“Just once,” John Berry said, pressing a hand on the wheel.
“No way,” Tom said.
“I won't get out of the car. I'll just see if any lights are on.”
Tom looked at him.
“Come on,” he said. “I'm begging you.”
“You'll come to my house then? Susan will fix up the couch.”
“Yep,” John Berry said, sipping the beer he'd snuck out of Paolo's under his shirt.
Tom shifted down and rounded the corner, then down once more as the car pumped onto the sandy street. They passed the two-trunked maple tree and the dilapidated shack where John Berry knew the island kids smoked dope. The other houses leading to Emily's were dark.
“Turn off the lights,” John Berry said as he hunkered down. His wobbly finger pointed through the glass. “Her cottage is there.”
“Nobody's home,” Tom said. “I didn't drive down here to chauffeur you around.”
“Shut up,” John Berry said, watching the sneakers, crab nets, and clam racks, sprawled all over her front porch. A sudden glow came on from inside the bedroom. “She's lit a candle,” he whispered.
Tom moved the car forward, its tires muffled in the sand. Neither spoke till the car was speeding up the island highway, a splinter of moon above. “They're lemon-scented,” John Berry said as he watched the waves beat against the sand.
TEN
NORFOLK
We're outta here,” Birdflower said, his hands on the wheel. “This island doesn't bother me in the winter, but when the tourists start coming out of the woodwork . . .” He shook his head and noticed the tall birds wading in Sugar Creek to their left. Wind sprayed from window to window. Emily watched the town end of the island fade till it was only a few slanted roofs and the top half of the lighthouse. Not since she borrowed John Berry's truck to pick up Eddie in Norfolk had she been off the island. She had been late and he was standing outside, his duffel bag by his feet, leaning against a phone booth. His voice high and breathless, “I thought you'd forgotten me,” he said.
Birdflower zoomed the tape deck fast forward to a whiny finish. He lit a cigarette and plugged the lighter back in. “What if he's on here?”
“He won't be,” she said, her fingertips tracing a seagull-shaped scar at her temple. “Nothing will happen.” Her eyes were focused on the back of the car in front of them, packed so tightly with clothing that a few boxes of cereal and crackers seemed to float up to the glass.
Emily sat in a back booth—a famous landmark map of North Carolina above her head. Birdflower watched her from his spot in line. Fluorescent lights made her skin look olive and patchy. She didn't take the mainland well. Two bare-chested boys in shorts danced near her with a helium balloon. They held it down, then let it go, laughing each time it floated back up. At a table close by, a surfer snuggled with his remarkably pale girlfriend.
Behind the counter a girl bagged burgers. In front of Birdflower was a man and his little girl in a blue bathing suit with a flounced skirt. The cashier pushed his tray forward and the child followed like a duck.
Emily caught his eye, smiled, waved.
Birdflower smiled back, then turned to order. On the ferry trip she'd kept her eyes on the empty cans and paper on the van's floor. She'd shifted in her seat and pinched the skin on her thigh. He'd tried to calm her, offered her weed, played the slow ballads on all his tapes, and finally asked her about being pregnant. It was then that she settled herself and talked quietly about sensations, moods, and how her hair had changed from yellow-white to a tone like goldenrod.
Birdflower listened, but he was preoccupied. He'd seen the ferrymen glare at the van and talk among themselves. He'd watched her and thought how important it was she stay with him. He was worried because he knew styles of men changed with the times. For a while he had been in fashion, sensitive, intuitive; but now women wanted other qualities, discipline, sternness, and money. On the mainland, his situation had been dismal, and that was why Emily seemed so crucial—she didn't seem to care that he'd gone completely out of style.
“This is so weird,” Emily said when he'd sat down. “All these people so close to you.”
“Seems a little barbaric,” Birdflower said. He unwrapped his burger.
“But you miss it,” Emily said. “I mean, these skinny french fries, and who could make a burger like this?” She held up her bun—mustard and ketchup mixed like an ink blot. “Like you could eat one of these anywhere.”
“Comfort in that?” Birdflower asked.
“Kind of,” Emily said, squirting a ketchup pack all over her fries.
The clerk handed him the aqua key ring. “We've tracked people down as far as Texas fo
r stealing stuff. You can have the Bible. But the rest is ours.”
Emily walked out of the motel's office and up the curling cement stairs. On the second floor, Birdflower slipped an arm around her waist. His eyelids looked heavy.
At the first convenience store after the McDonald's—which they had not stopped at but still somehow seemed a marker for him—Birdflower had pulled a rolled plastic bag from under the seat. He puffed, spoke in a held-breath voice, and let the smoke blow against the glass. He turned up his tapes, and again and again raced the reverse to familiar guitar riffs. It wasn't that she didn't like getting high, she appreciated the easing, the slight numbing sensation, the way time lost parameters, and how touching became central and diaphanous as air. But she didn't think Birdflower should smoke so much and he'd gotten so stoned on the trip she'd felt like the only sober one at a drunken high school party.
Her thonged sandal sucked cement. “Why so fast, baby?” Bird, flower said, grabbing her arm. He looked like a retarded man: same slow eyes she'd seen once on a man watching girls pass on the beach.
Up Through the Water Page 8
