The Waiting

by Joe Hart

  “What?” Selena asked, coming to his side.

  “There’s a dog outside. Shit, it needs help, it’s injured.”

  Evan moved around Selena, to the counter, where he knew more towels lay neatly tucked inside the lowermost drawer. He pulled three or four out and dashed through the living room to the outside door, not bothering with his shoes before plunging outside.

  The air was warmer than earlier, and the sun looked too bright in the now-cloudless sky. A small stick cracked under his foot as he ran around the side of the house, but other than that he heard no sound. How the hell had a dog gotten onto the island, much less one without rear legs? A collage of images including spinning boat propellers and glistening bone shot through his mind. Evan ran to where the dog had vanished from view, trying to decide what action to take when he found the poor creature. Could he stanch the flow enough to get the animal across the water and into town? Was there a veterinarian in Mill River that would be open now?

  An oily patch of blood glistened on several blades of grass, and the sight made his scalp pull tight, halting all other thoughts. He slowed his pace and traced the two drag marks with his eyes. The faint sound of the house door swinging shut echoed across the yard. He walked in a straight line, stepping around a few globs of coagulated blood, all the while searching the trees ahead for the golden fur he knew couldn’t be too far away. The tracks led down through the quiet trees, never deviating left or right. His throat tightened against the thick smell of blood. There was a lot of it, pools of black here and there, reflecting the thick canopy of branches overhead in monochrome flashes. The ground leveled off, and he could hear the slow beat of waves against the shoreline. If the dog got confused and waded into the water, it would certainly perish. Evan picked up his pace and then slid to a stop, turning back the way he’d come.

  The drag lines curved a little and then stopped beside a towering pine tree. A few specks of blood dotted the ground and then disappeared, as if the dog had paused here and then ... what? Evan hurried around the base of the tree, sure that he would find the hump of matted fur barely breathing on the other side—but there was nothing. A sound drew his attention back the way he’d come, and he saw Selena making her way toward him, her face full of questions.

  A horrifying thought came to him, and he froze, watching Selena approach.

  “Do you see it? The blood?”

  She frowned and looked at the ground, then returned his gaze. “Yes, how could I miss it?”

  He nodded.

  “What the hell happened to it?” she asked, stepping beside him.

  “I don’t know, but its back legs were gone.” He heard her surprised intake of breath.

  “But where is it?”

  They moved out in an expanding circle, keeping the last sign of blood at the center. Evan walked all the way down to the lake before coming back to the pine. He stared at the ground and knelt, touching the blood with one finger. It was sticky, and a bit of sand came up with it. He rubbed his finger against his pants legs and looked at Selena, who appeared shaken. Her hair hung in damp strands next to her face, and her cheeks, normally full of color, were slack and pale.

  “Maybe it made it all the way to the lake,” she said.

  Evan shook his head, still staring at the bare spot of ground on which the last drops of blood lay. “There would’ve been something, blood on the rocks, and if it drowned, it should still float.” He tore his gaze away from the earth and looked at Selena. “Was Shaun still sleeping when you left the house?”

  “Yeah, I checked on him before I followed you.”

  “Let’s go back, and I’ll call animal control in town, maybe they have a list of missing pets.”

  She nodded and turned toward the house. Evan stood a moment longer, listening to waves lap on the shore, the smell of blood no longer strong but still in the air, before following her through the trees.

  22

  “Thanks very much, I appreciate your help.”

  Evan ended the call and looked to Selena and Shaun at the kitchen table. Shaun sucked on a glass of orange juice through a straw, while Selena cupped a mug of tea she hadn’t took a drink from yet.

  “Well?” she asked, as he sat in a seat opposite them.

  “Nothing. No golden labs, or any dogs for that matter, have been reported missing in the last week. They said if we saw it again to call them and they’d send someone out to take care of it,” Evan said, rubbing a dark stain on the table with his finger.

  “Someone must have dumped it here then,” Selena said. “Threw it out of a boat as they were passing by.” She made a disgusted face and cupped her tea tighter.

  “Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. Horrible.”

  “Do you think it’s still alive?”

  Evan recalled the amount of the blood on the ground and how the animal had moved, jerking and lunging forward as though determined to get into the woods. It was on its last legs. He closed his eyes and forced the black humor away.

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  No one said anything until Shaun finished his orange juice with a loud sucking sound as the straw vacuumed up the last vestiges of liquid. Shaun sat back, belched, and looked at Evan.

  “More!”

  Evan glanced at Selena, and they both burst out laughing. Shaun smiled, delighted at having caused the outburst. He signed with his hands and yelled again.

  “More!”

  Evan stood, the laughter pealing out of him. “You need to eat dinner first, buddy.”

  He tousled Shaun’s hair as he walked by and opened the fridge to begin the process of making supper.

  Selena chuckled a few more times and then took her cup of tea to the sink. Her hip brushed his thigh as she walked by, and a ripple of pleasure rolled up from the point of contact. He cleared his throat and pulled the hamburger and cheese from within the fridge.

  “Stay for dinner?” he asked, as she poured the tea out and set the cup down.

  “You know, I better not. I heard there might be rain tonight, and I’ve been out on the lake in storms before. It’s not pleasant.”

  He was about to say, You can stay here tonight, but cut it off with a self-conscious effort. His mind immediately pelted him with versions of how the night would go. How he would make up the couch for himself and give Selena his bed. How she would come to him in the night, silent and ethereal, covered with only a blanket, and ask him to join her.

  He swallowed, realizing she’d said something he hadn’t caught.

  “Sorry, what?”

  She smiled a little. “I said, maybe tomorrow or the next day, though. I shouldn’t be busy.”

  “Sure, no problem. I’ll walk you out.”

  Selena said goodbye to Shaun before they moved to the door, Evan maddeningly aware of how close her skin was to his. Should he try to kiss her? Would that be too forward? She’d already bridged that particular gap, so he didn’t think she would shrink away, but did he really want to? His emotions seemed caught on a bungee cord. One minute he would be tight, bound by thoughts of Elle in cords of guilt, and in another he would be free-falling, recalling the gentle breeze that had seemed to caress his face that day on the porch when he’d asked for a sign. Elle would want him to be happy; she’d even said so.

  That was enough to kill the urge to try anything physical with Selena. Instead, he opened the door for her and waited as she stopped by his side.

  “Tomorrow?” she asked.

  “Tomorrow.”

  She leaned in, and for a second he readied himself either to commit toward her or to pull back. Caught in his indecision, he stayed still as she placed her lips on his cheek and kissed him lightly before stepping back.

  “Get home safe,” he said, a huskiness in his voice.

  She smiled over her shoulder and walked toward her beached canoe. Evan shut the door and touched the place where she’d kissed him. It burned a little, and he could still feel the softness of her lips there.

  Moving back int
o the kitchen, he clapped his hands together, startling Shaun, who grinned at him.

  “Let’s make some lascagna, Shauny!” he said, intentionally mispronouncing the word as his mother had done when he was a child.

  Shaun laughed, and Evan began to cook.

  ~

  He recited the last page of Goodnight Moon and glanced at Shaun, whose eyes were closed and mouth was open a crack. He breathed deep, in slow measures that never failed to make Evan feel at ease. Sleeping. He couldn’t get hurt while he was sleeping, couldn’t fall or tip from his chair, couldn’t choke on food.

  Or hair.

  Evan grimaced. “Night, honey, I love you.”

  He kissed Shaun’s scar, feeling the puckered flesh there, soft but ridged where his head had been split open like an egg. He left the bedroom, not closing the door all the way, and walked to the kitchen, already knowing where he was headed.

  The basement was cool, and for once Evan welcomed it. The air outside the house had taken on a thick and heavy feeling as a single thundercloud approached from the west. Maybe the rain would wash the air clean. Maybe it would wash away the blood outside. The thought slowed him as he was about to sit at the worktable. He could see the poor animal limping, its awkward movements disturbing and strange.

  Something clicked in the silence of the basement, startling him. Evan turned toward the sound, toward the clock. He stepped forward and set his hand against the side of the closest encasement. Maybe the humidity in the air caused its joints to shift.

  Maybe it knows you’re close.

  He shivered and stepped back, focusing on the work he’d done the night before.

  The schematics and diagrams had seemed impossibly complex, but the more he looked, the easier they were to read. After several hours of toiling the night before, he judged that the clock was almost completely back together.

  Evan started working again. Untangling the weight cables had been the most challenging aspect of the repair so far. Someone had yanked and pulled on the cables until they’d become a snarled mess. The timing mechanism itself didn’t look damaged, but the one thing that stood out was an extra rocking switch mounted under the chime hammer. The switch wasn’t listed on any of the diagrams, and when he’d tried to flip it back and forth, it wouldn’t move a bit. All he could gather was that it would need to be flipped after the clock was fully reassembled and wound, which would be soon.

  Wound.

  The word made him freeze in place as he hung the last of the three brass weights on its cable. He would need to wind the clock, and for that he’d need—

  “A key,” he said.

  A small sliver of panic lanced through him. He hadn’t seen a winding key on the table, or inside the clock for that matter. Evan finished hanging the weight and sifted through the papers on the table, picking them up and setting them aside with care. After scouring the table, he searched under it. Nothing. He opened the clock door and half crawled inside, running his fingers along the base. He bumped the pendulum with his shoulder while standing, causing the chime to utter a muted bong. It sounded ominous, a single drumbeat in the middle of an uninhabited jungle. Licking his lips, he stepped back and closed the encasement door. His eyes traveled up its length, to the very top, where the two carved points—horns—came together.

  Evan grabbed the chair and pulled it close to the encasement, and stood on its seat. The top of the clock was level with a small trim piece that ran its entire edge. Nothing but cobwebs and dust lay on its surface.

  “Shit,” he said, stepping down from the chair.

  His gaze fell on the three holes at the bottom of the clock’s face. Three holes that would accept a single, specially made key, which wasn’t here. A black anger began to flow through him. Even if he put the clock completely back together, he would have no way to make it work without the key.

  He raised a fist, sure in that moment that he would smash it through the glass door, pull out all the work that he’d done in the last two nights. Destroy it, burn it.

  Slowly his fist fell to his side, and tears flowed into his eyes like rain filling cisterns during a storm. Why? He pulled the chair close to the table and dropped onto it. Why? Fate had brought them here, he knew it, for one single purpose: to go back.

  “It wasn’t supposed to happen,” he croaked. “We weren’t supposed to get hit, Elle wasn’t supposed to die.” He ground his teeth together. “We’re supposed to go back and fix it.”

  Evan sniffed once and wiped his palms across his eyes, smearing the tears away, disgusted. He stood and opened the encasement door again, making sure that the long chime rods were securely in place.

  It’s ready, and the key has to be here somewhere.

  He started by searching every drawer and cabinet in the workbench and found nothing. He pawed through boxes of fabric and knickknacks that lined the opposite wall. He crawled from one end of the basement to the other, his face inches from the cool floor as he tried to spot the shape of a key lying somewhere.

  Somewhere.

  Evan tramped up the stairs, a sheen of sweat standing out on his face. The palms of his hands were dark with dust and dirt, but he barely noticed the smudges he left on the kitchen counter and drawers as he sifted through their contents. Towels, silverware, pens, pencils, pots, pans—everything went on the floor.

  When he finished with the kitchen, he continued in the living room, pulling the cushions from the couch and looking behind the entertainment center. The front closet held only an old rain slicker and an ancient tackle box. He dumped the tackle out and left everything in a heap on the closet floor, finding nothing.

  His room didn’t take long since there weren’t many places for a key to hide. As he pulled the last drawer in the bedside table open, a growl left his throat, sounding more animal than human.

  He banged the door open and moved to the far end of the house, not pausing before walking straight into the master bedroom. Evan strode to the bed and flipped up the mattress and box spring to look beneath them. He dropped both and went to the closet, pulled the double doors open, grunting upon seeing the empty space.

  One place left.

  He went to Shaun’s room, his eyes casting back and forth as he walked, thinking that the key could be sitting in plain sight, and had been the entire time they had been there. He pushed through Shaun’s door and slowed, seeing his son’s thin body beneath the blanket, the rise and fall of his chest, a shadow clinging to the opposite side of his head, the side with the scar.

  An overwhelming sense of defeat crashed into him, and he stumbled with its weight. In slow motion, Evan fell to his knees beside the bed. His head hung down, chin against breastbone. He’d been a tornado until that point, sure that the key must be somewhere within the house. Life couldn’t possibly be that cruel, but it was, he knew it was. And he also knew that—

  “It’s not here.” Evan lifted his head, speaking in a trembling whisper. “It’s not here, honey. I was hoping, really hoping.”

  He sniffled, and Shaun turned a little in the bed, so that he faced Evan more. Evan reached out and stroked his smooth cheek with one finger.

  “I wanted to fix it all, buddy, take you back and we could try again.” A small laugh slipped out. “We could be a family again.” A wrenching tightness in his chest squeezed, and then broke. “But that’s not going to happen, buddy. I’m so sorry, son, so sorry all this happened.”

  Evan sobbed into his forearm to stifle the sound. Hot tears streaked down his face, and he remembered the last time he’d cried this much. It was when Elle had slipped away. She hadn’t been awake for almost a day when it happened. The morphine in her system was blunting most of the pain, the doctor said, but Evan wondered, he really wondered. He remembered how she’d twitched and then moved her legs and arms, so strong before, now just sticks with drying flesh coating them. It was as though she’d already died and was decaying before his eyes.

  He remembered her turning toward him. He supposed it was because of the window;
the light had been behind him. She turned and then—

  —opens her eyes. Her beautiful eyes. He stands and clutches the hand she holds out to him, a skeletal thing that grips his palm with no strength. He waits, hovering there beside the god-awful bed, in the god-awful hospital, with the god-awful smell of death. She purses her lips, their surfaces dry and cracked no matter how much water she drinks or how many layers of lip balm they apply.

  “Be ...” she begins, and her eyes roll back before returning to focus on his face.

  Something is tearing within him, and he realizes it is her leaving his side after almost a decade of being together. His other half that carried his child. His soul mate.

  “It’s okay, honey, it’s okay,” he says, knowing full well it isn’t. It isn’t okay that she is dying. Nothing will be okay ever again.

  Her eyelids flutter, and she seems to compose herself for the last time on earth.

  “Be happy,” she says, with an effort that looks equivalent to moving mountains.

  He bites down on the choked moan of grief that wants to spill out, has to spill out, and nods, smoothing the last thin tangles of her hair away from her burning forehead. She rolls further toward him, as if she wants an embrace, and he gives it to her, holds her as he feels the life flow out through a few gasps and tremors. When he finally lets her go, the shoulder of her nightgown is wet with his tears and her eyes are closed.

  Evan awoke to the sound of Shaun moving. He sat up, his arm cocked in a funny angle above him. Pins and needles coursed in jigging lines of fire up and down his leg as he unfolded it from beneath him.

  “Wawee.”

  Shaun’s voice made Evan start, and when he glanced at him, he saw that Shaun’s eyes were still closed. Dreaming. He waited, the feeling returning to his limbs little by little.

  “Wawee.”

  Shaun spoke the word quieter now, as if falling back into whatever dream that prompted his speech. Evan smiled and touched his hand, holding it for a moment as the tears from his dream dried on his face. Shaun’s eyes shot open, along with his mouth, and Evan thought he might scream. But his face twisted into a semblance of a sneeze and his body snapped tight, his small muscles rigid as he bucked off the bed’s surface.