The Storm King: A Novel

by Brendan Duffy

  He was nearly to the front door when the cruiser peeled away from the curb like the flag had dropped on a drag race. Nate watched Tom scorch down the street, running over broken branches and leaving a mist of water in his wake. Guilt, pity, obligation—whatever mash of buttons Nate had pressed, at least one of them had done the trick. In their youth, time and pressure had proven the trick to getting Tom to do anything. This was how Nate would discover whatever his friend was keeping from him.

  Nate had his grandmother’s house keys, but the front door was unlocked. Grams must have neglected to secure it in her rush to get him to the hospital, but the Lake had become a battleground and her home had been left open for hours. When he stepped into the house Nate was both wary and ready.

  Once inside, he bolted the front door behind him, then walked the perimeter of each room on the main floor. The house still had electricity, so he flicked each light switch he came upon, establishing some semblance of the daylight that should have filled the place at this hour. He verified that every window was intact and locked, and that the back door was as secured as the front.

  Nate got a flashlight from the kitchen, then traipsed down the narrow stairs to the basement. The air was damp and faintly redolent of laundry. It was an old house, and the cellar was pocked with strange nooks and odd crawl spaces. He illuminated every cranny and opened every closed cabinet.

  He was looking for anything: unsecured entrances, cracked windows, loosened pipes, ticking bombs, lurking intruders. These kids weren’t going to take anything else from Grams. They weren’t going to catch Nate unprepared ever again.

  When he was satisfied with the state of the basement, he repeated the process on the main floor, second floor, and attic. The handyman Tom had called must have taken advantage of the unlocked front door, because the broken window in Nate’s room had been replaced. When he decided that everything else looked in order, Nate took a shower.

  The hot water felt good on his muscles. He was sore all over, as if he’d pushed himself far too hard in the gym after many months of indolence. Rage was power, but it came with costs. Missing hours and scarred hands. Aching joints and ground teeth. Broken trust and splintered friendships.

  But this morning’s blackout was the first one he’d had in over a decade. Tom was right: This town was a dangerous place for Nate. Maybe he should have stayed away. But now blood had again been spilled. Another girl was dead, and Grams might soon join her. Nate hadn’t hurt either of them, but that didn’t mean he was innocent. He’d returned to the Lake with debts to pay, and these had mounted in the short time he’d been back. He could flee this place as he had so many years ago, but he owed it to Lucy and Grams to do more than that. The Jeffers girl, too, even if he didn’t yet understand how she fit with everything else. He had the sense, too, that abandoning the Lake fourteen years ago hadn’t solved any problems so much as it had delayed them. Today’s troubles were connected to the tempest of his youth. Accounts had to be settled, equations balanced. He had to unwind the secrets of the Lake once and for all. Like a visit to hell itself, the way out was the way through.

  Particulates of dried blood collected around his feet while he tenderly cleaned the area around his stitched scalp. An ache resonated from below the scarred portion of his arm. The pain sang of a storm.

  Before shaving, he wiped the condensation from the mirror and was surprised by how normal he looked. He searched his eyes for traces of the other, but the only person he saw was himself.

  He was dressed and ready with time to spare before Tom returned.

  Cold drafts from the chaos outside brought a sense of movement to the rooms of the empty house. The scrape of branches against the siding and creaks from the old roof filled the place with sounds. The windows groaned in the onslaught.

  Nate had quickly examined Grams’s room, as he had the rest of the house, but he returned there now. The bedroom was Spartan. A simple wooden bed frame and a chest of drawers. A narrow desk with a chair.

  There was a black chest under one of the windows. Gram called this her memory chest. She stored ancient photo albums and other artifacts of the past within it. When he was young, Grams would sit with Nate and Gabe atop its stained wood and show them photos of their father as a boy, their grandfather when he was in the army, even their great-grandparents on vacation. They’d stopped looking at these after the accident, or at least they’d stopped looking at them together.

  Nate unfastened the clasps of the chest, and its hinges squealed when he forced it open. Mismatched albums were piled in stacks. Nate immediately recognized a copy of his and Meg’s wedding album and Livvy’s baby book. A sprig of golden hair bound in white satin was fastened inside the front cover of the lace-lined book, and Nate slid his finger over it, its strands too fine to discern.

  He still hadn’t told Meg about Grams. He’d justified this with the fact that his phone was dead. But even with a landline within reach, he hesitated. He didn’t know how to explain to his wife that within a day of arriving home, he’d been knocked unconscious, Grams had been put into critical condition, and the Union had exploded.

  Anyone would have had a mountain of questions, but Meg was an excellent lawyer and nothing but the truth would have satisfied her. Nate didn’t even know where the truth began.

  One perfect April morning he had hit a triple in the last inning.

  Johnny pulled up his shirt, and beneath it was a mosaic of pain.

  Adam lifted Lucy into the air like she weighed no more than a promise.

  He didn’t know where the beginning was because he couldn’t guess what the ending would be. As long as he was in the thick of it, the shape of the story would remain a mystery.

  Gabe’s baby book was beneath Livvy’s, and this was a volume he couldn’t bear to open. He moved it aside to find a collection of faded black paper bound by red ribbon. These held mounted, washed-out photographs of his grandmother and grandfather in their younger days. Arm in arm on a beach. Standing proudly outside the Union. Posing in front of a Christmas tree.

  Nate closed the album and was about to return it to its place when an envelope fell from its pages. It was a strange color—a shade of red so dark that it could be mistaken for black.

  It was addressed in spikes and loops of calligraphy to Mr. & Mrs. Richard McHale of 217 Bonaparte Street. He pulled out the thick stock within the envelope.

  Declare Independence at the Night Ship

  July 4th, 1964

  Above these words was an engraved image of a galleon with its sails ripe with wind and its course set for a full moon of impossible size.

  It was an invitation to an event at the Night Ship. Not just any event: This was the Independence Day celebration where, legend had it, Just June had poisoned the revelers and triggered a panic. This had been the party that sank the Night Ship.

  The blast of a car horn permeated the rumbling of the storm. Through the window, Nate saw the bleary contours of Tom’s cruiser.

  He turned back to the envelope in his hands. Independence Day 1964 was perhaps the most notorious night in the Lake’s history. He had no idea that his grandparents had been invited. Grams had never once mentioned it.

  Another blare of sound came from the car parked outside.

  Nate stuck the envelope into his raincoat pocket, descended the stairs, grabbed his umbrella, and girded himself to face the hurricane.

  “Hi,” he said as he got into the cruiser. The clean, ferocious scent of Medea followed him into the car.

  “Hi,” Tom parroted back.

  They took Bonaparte Street at a crawl. Nate couldn’t see the Night Ship, but he could sense it. His internal compass had reverted to an old setting in which the ruined pier was magnetic north.

  Nate tried and failed to imagine his grandparents at the Night Ship’s final celebration. The ancient pier had played such an outsized role in his formative years that it was easy for him to forget that it had long been an intimate part of the Lake’s life. It had a deep, everyday h
istory beyond its oft-told legends. This was a good reminder to Nate that the Lake’s stories weren’t the same as the truth, that he didn’t know everything, and that he never would.

  Next to him, Tom was silent. The wipers pawed uselessly at the windshield. They were the only sound in the car until they reached an intersection that they hydroplaned across. Tom loosed a torrent of swearwords as they spun helplessly across the lanes and then over the curb.

  “You okay?” Tom asked once they’d come to a stop.

  “Yeah.”

  Tom threw them into reverse and took the street again, more slowly this time.

  “You’re not dressed,” Nate said. Under his raingear, Tom wore a clean deputy’s uniform but not a suit. For the first time, Nate noticed a sweet smell inside the close air of the car.

  “The whole county is literally a disaster area. This saves me the trouble of changing.”

  “You’ve been drinking.” Nate knew bourbon when he smelled it. “It’s ten-fifty in the morning.” The Tom Buck he knew did not get sloshed before noon.

  “I’ve been up since three. So it’s more like midafternoon.”

  “Aren’t you on duty?”

  “Please give me a lecture on duty, Nate.”

  “Do you want me to drive?”

  “You live in Manhattan.”

  “Slow down.”

  “I’m going eight miles an—”

  “I want to see the Union. Stop here.”

  Tom stopped in the middle of the street. This might have been a problem any other day, but this morning theirs was the only vehicle in sight.

  Nate lowered his window to see beyond the streaming glass. He jutted his umbrella into the assault of wind for some cover from the rain.

  The fire at the Union had been set only a few hours ago, but a century might have passed from the look of the place. The three-story building was gutted. An accountant and a dentist leased the upper floors, and the windows of their offices gaped like unblinking eyes; their fragments glittered along the flooded street. Streaks of charred brickwork stretched past the two upper floors to the roof. Through the maw of vacant windows, fallen beams impaled the old pub like crossed blades.

  Nate’s great-great-grandfather had built this place over a century ago. His fingers had mixed the mortar between its bricks, and his hands had helped plane the supports that held up its ceilings. Nate’s great-grandfather had polished the black bar every night for forty years. When his grandfather’s polio-warped legs gave way, he’d roll from one end of the place to the other on a wheeled stool, leaving grooves in the floor that seared through decades of varnish. Nate’s own father had swept clean those floors each night of every summer of his youth.

  Meg and Livvy had never seen this place, and now they never would. It was gone, and the people who’d spent their lives here were now more absent than they’d been before.

  In the bleak weather, the only color came from the bright lines of caution tape strung around the building’s perimeter. Even the rain couldn’t keep the scorched smell from the air.

  Nate stared through the empty front windows and imagined his grandmother lifted by the force of the blast from the kitchen and tossed across the room. If he went inside, he wondered if he’d be able to trace the arc of her transit through fire and smoke.

  “You can’t go in,” Tom said. “It’s a crime scene.”

  Nate glanced at Tom then back to the remains of the pub. He let his gaze loiter more for Tom than for himself. Stress poured from his friend as palpably as the whiskey fumes. Micro-expressions quaked across Tom’s face like wires trembling under tension. Nate was sure it wouldn’t take much more for them to snap.

  He closed his umbrella and rolled up the window.

  Tom put the cruiser back into drive without another word.

  The church was only a few blocks away. The stone edifice of its bell tower blended with the ashen palette of the sky. A spindly maple swayed on its lawn. There were perhaps two dozen cars in the lot, but the building looked as lifeless as everything else in the besieged town.

  They parked and sat, watching the rain shatter against the windshield.

  “Are you mad at me, Tom?”

  “What would be the point?”

  “Your dad said I abandoned you,” Nate said. “You and Johnny. When it all happened, I had to get out of here. I’m sorry I didn’t see you as much as I promised I would once we were down in the city. Every reminder of this place was—” He shook his head, making sure that his brow was furrowed with sincerity and that his eyes welled with feeling. “If you felt abandoned, I’m sorry. There’s no way to make up for it now, but I’m so sorry. You’re a good friend. The best friend I’ve ever had. Hurting you is the last thing I’d want to do.”

  He watched his friend’s hands bloom white on the steering wheel. It took a few moments before Tom met his gaze.

  “Why don’t you just shut the hell up for once in your life?” Tom said as he opened his door. A mist of spittle clouded the air between them.

  Nate had expected anger, but the vehemence in Tom’s voice was more than he could have hoped for.

  Tom left in a fury of movement, slamming the door behind him so hard that it rocked Nate in his seat. He watched through the windshield as Tom raised his hood against the storm and stalked to the church’s side door.

  The maple rooted on the church’s lawn continued to rock. Its sway counted the seconds, and its trunk creaked in the onslaught. When the storm returned to full force, Nate suspected that what was now bent would then break.

  June 19

  Sometimes I don’t know if I can do it anymore and be everything he wants me to be all the time.

  Some days the two of us are the best thing I can imagine, but other times it’s like being buried alive. They’re piling dirt on me shovel by shovel, covering who I’m supposed to be. We keep talking about how things’ll be great when we’re in the city, like it’s a perfect future just waiting for us. But what if things aren’t perfect? Because we’re going to be the same people there. Even Tom the Spineless Wonder will be there, sulking and filling the place like a thundercloud. Nate’s always so sure of everything, and I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.

  Sometimes I think I love Nate. Some days I’m almost sure of it. Other times I wonder if I only love the way people treat me because I’m with him. The Lake’s own son. The Boy Who Fell. He’s special, and being with him makes me special, too. So am I using him, or is he using me? Is that what love is—two people using each other?

  There’s no escape, though, and I don’t think that’s how love’s supposed to work. Always watched. Always judged. It’s not just Nate. Whenever I’m away from him, the Lake’s eyes are on me. Is she worthy of our perfect boy? Does a murderer’s daughter deserve our golden son? Would it be that much worse in Ogdensburg with Dad?

  Maybe I’ll miss this old pier. The one place I can be by myself, away from those eyes.

  At least no one in the city knows my story. There, I can be anyone. I wouldn’t have to fight for every inch. I could leave Nate, and no one would care because in the normal world this happens all the time. No one would skewer me with dirty looks from across the street or tell the twins what a legendary bitch their sister is. I think I could be kind if I wanted to be. I think I could be just about anything if I could just be free.

  Tonight, I forgot for a second that I wasn’t free. I could blame the alcohol and all the other stuff, but that’d be a lie. Yeah, Adam’s done me worse than just about anyone in this town ever did, but he also liked me and not because he was afraid of me or because of who I’m dating. He liked me for me, back when I had nothing but myself to offer. And yeah, maybe I did want to remind Nate that I’m more than just some item on his checklist for a perfect life. That my needs and wants aren’t always going to be the same as his. I guess it was stupid, flirting with Adam right where Nate could see us. A real bimbo move, trying to make a guy jealous like that, but everyone else is allowed to
make mistakes, so why not me? It shouldn’t have gotten out of hand the way it did.

  Nate didn’t look at me while he hacked away at Adam, but he did when he was finished. And Christ, his face. That way he smiles like a wolf. All teeth. I’ve seen that look before, but he’s never used it on me. Not ever. It’s different when those ice-cold eyes are on you. So I ran. Because I know Nate isn’t really there when he’s like this. He’s something else, and whatever that thing is, it scares me. I think it scares everyone. Sometimes in bed I wonder—

  Christ. No peace for me tonight. Not even in the Night Ship. Someone’s coming.

  FOR NATE, EVERY song was an excuse to hold Lucy close and not let go. If he flung her spiraling outward it was only to clutch her tighter when she returned to him.

  “Too bad you only dance when you’re drunk, McHale,” Lucy said into his shoulder.

  Maybe it was the music, or the pot, or the pills, but the edges of the party blurred and faded until she was the only thing he saw in color.

  This night was theirs, as would be every night to follow.

  The glade was a torrent of everything. The music got louder, and the movements of the crowd became faster. The amazement of chemicals conflated Nate’s senses in unexpected ways. The bass beat from the speakers smelled like pine. Seeing Tom’s grin felt like a bath of indigo.

  People appeared and vanished. Lucy was in his arms and then she was gone. He jumped to the rhythm with Tom and Emma, their movements out of tandem and perfectly in synch. Nate was a note in the song and together they were a chord and with the others in the glade they became a symphony.