by Sarah Porter
After a while the open sea bent back and there was the harbor below her instead, its sandbars crowded with lounging sea lions. She reached the town’s biggest street, lined with small wooden houses whose overhanging upper stories were supported on posts. There were a few stores here that sold odd foods like sugar-cured salmon and smoked elk meat alongside the canned beans and chips. Everything was made of the same wooden boards, everything was painted dark brown or tan, and the hills were crossed by the same flimsy stairs as the slopes behind her own house. The whole town seemed to be trying to crawl away from the sea. In one spot there was a two-room shack that hadn’t managed to escape in time: the shore had eroded beneath it, and now it stood at an awkward slant, abandoned to the gray waves that pawed again and again through its single glassless window.
"If you think you can get away with crawling out of school, I'll teach you to think different!” The voice was bellowing but slurred, and it made Luce stumble a little from shock as it broke through her daydream. She'd come to the stretch with the town's two bars and one ramshackle church, all lined up against the hard ascent of the mountains behind. Her uncle Peter had just slumped out of the Dark Water Inn, and his breath smelled of sour drink and decay as he glared wearily down at her. "If you're too damned lazy for school, we'll see how lazy you can be gutting fish all day! Up to your elbows in the slime of their innards. And you'll see how easy it is for the knife to slip, too.”
"They let us out early,” Luce said, shrinking back a little. As long as the policeman didn't keep calling him, she could probably get away with the lie. Her uncle would never get around to checking up on her himself.
"Maybe that's all right, then.” He looked at her skeptically. "I heard something awfully strange, though. Heard you were the one went and found that dead baby on the beach? At dawn today?” Luce was appalled; of course, she thought, of course she should have realized that the news would get back to him. "What kind of business you think you have, sneaking out of the house like that? You think people don't talk when they hear that? Saying I don't keep enough of an eye on you.”
"I couldn't sleep,” Luce whispered. She could tell by the way her uncle glared at her that this wasn't good enough. "I just went for a little walk?”
“Not trustworthy enough to be left alone,” he muttered. “You go getting into trouble all the time, and I have to hear about it from who-knows-who running their damned mouths.” Of course he didn’t even mention the fact that she could have drowned, Luce thought. Peter had his hand on the back of her neck, and he steered her into the bar. “You’re going to sit right down and not cause any more disturbance until I’m ready to go home.”
“I can go home by myself! I promise. I’ll just go home and do homework.”
“You’ll do your homework right here,” Peter snapped; he apparently hadn’t noticed that she didn’t have her book bag with her. Luce realized that she couldn’t argue with him, not while he was in such a foul mood. He shoved her down at an out-of-the-way table back in the corner next to the broken jukebox. Someone had left a tattered romance novel on a chair, and Luce picked it up just to look like she was doing something. Maybe Peter would get so drunk that he’d forget all about her, and she could slip away. The bartender watched her curiously.
“Didn’t know you had one of those, Peter,” he observed while Luce’s uncle swayed across the dim space toward the bar. Peter slung his heavy thighs up onto his stool and knocked back the trace of whiskey that was left at the bottom of his glass. Daylight floated in through the dusty windows, but most of the bar was already just as dark as it would be late at night.
“Not mine. She’s not mine. Just the pain in the ass my no-good brother left me. Leave it to Andrew to keep causing problems even after he’s dead.” The bartender didn’t laugh at this the way he was supposed to; his mouth pinched and he shot her uncle Peter a critical look. "She's not mine, that is,” her uncle snarled defensively. "But she should have been.”
Luce hunched down as far as she could, hearing that. The tightness came back in her stomach, because things always went badly when her uncle started talking this way. He'd definitely beat her once they were alone.
"How should it be,” the bartender asked, "that the girl should belong to anybody? Excepting to the ones who made her?” He had his back to Luce now, fetching out the whiskey to pour her uncle a new shot. He thought of something. "'Where's her mother?”
"You remember Alyssa Gray?” her uncle asked. The bartender looked at him sharply.
"Who doesn't remember her? Sweet, bright, funny girl like that. Could make anybody laugh like crazy. And so beautiful, too.” The bartender glanced at Luce again, but she kept her head down over her book, even though she couldn't read it very well in the dimness. It was something about the bronze hair and oddly violet eyes of the heroine. The dead girl's eyelids had had a pearly iridescence to them, Luce remembered, almost a shimmer. "You don't mean that’s Alyssa's daughter?”
"And Alyssa, you seem not to recall, was my girl. Talking about marrying me, even, before Andrew dragged her off from here. He just fooled her with all his crazy talk. And he made her a sidekick to his messed-up life of rip-offs and split towns. It was like some kind of obstacle course for them, what with all the places they couldn't go back to.” The bartender didn't seem particularly interested in what Peter was telling him now, though. Luce didn't let herself look, but she knew he was still gazing her way.
“I guess that girl does look a lot like her mother. Almost as pretty. You just don’t see it too easy because the personality’s so different. Alyssa would have had everybody cracking up by now.” Luce wished they would talk about something else. There was no chance her uncle would stop looking over at her as long as he kept thinking about her mother. “Andrew—he was one of the guys lost with the High and Mighty, wasn’t he?”
“Andrew’s whole damn life was a shipwreck. The High and Mighty was just the finishing touch for him.” Her uncle’s voice sounded different now: smeary and vicious, yes, but also choked. “Everybody who got near him went down with his own personal disaster. Killed Alyssa, just by not getting her to the hospital in time. And now you can see what’s left of him.” Luce knew, without looking, that her uncle was nodding in her direction. “Flotsam spinning around on the waves.”
“And you don’t think, if Alyssa was alive,” the bartender challenged, “she’d appreciate you speaking more kindly of her child?” Peter didn’t answer that. He’d turned to gaze off at a spot on the floor, and Luce thought he might be about to start sobbing. The silence felt thick and somehow sticky. After ten minutes of quiet she tried to slip out of her chair, but her uncle’s gaze pivoted to fix on her at once.
The afternoon wouldn’t end, and Luce couldn’t leave. Every time she tried moving even slightly her uncle swung his bleary face and glowered at her. He kept drinking, and every time he looked her way his face seemed bigger and messier, less like a human face and more like a pile of wet garbage, or a plastic bag wobbling around on the sea. She let her head drop on the table and closed her eyes.
***
She was lying propped on her elbows on a cheap motel bed. They'd stopped on the outskirts of Minneapolis, and the window was white with falling snow. She was half daydreaming and half watching a dance contest on TV while her father paced around the room talking on his cell phone. Sometimes he'd wander back toward the bathroom, like there was something he didn't want Luce to overhear. On the TV a woman in black sequins kicked her leg high and arched her back until her long hair brushed the floor. Luce's own dark hair had just been cropped, short and spiky: what her father called a pixie cut. "It suits your otherworldly beauty,” he'd told her, which made it hard for Luce to argue with him. "And besides, this way we won't have to keep messing with trying to get the tangles out.”
Now she knew he was talking to his brother, Peter, far away in Alaska. It was one of the few states Luce had never been to, and she'd never met Peter, but she knew talking to him usually put her fathe
r into a glum mood. "No, you do have a point there, Peter,” Luce heard her father say. "You absolutely do.” There was silence for a while. "You think I ever stop thinking about that! Look, I'm well aware—that I could have done better by her mother. I'm well aware. "We were a hundred miles from the nearest town when the van broke down. You think I should have tried to operate on her myself?”
Luce barely remembered her mother, but it hurt her to hear the ache in her father's voice. She rolled onto her side and watched the dancing snow, how the white swirls almost canceled out the world behind. She could just make out the cloudy shape of the motel’s big blue sign.
“No, I am not determined to live my whole life repeating the same mistakes!” There was another silence. “School’s a waste for some kids,” he snapped. “You should see how fine a job Luce is doing educating her own self. The books that girl reads!” Her father was pacing faster, smacking the mustard-colored walls with his free hand. “Peter, you’ve made your point. You’ve already made it. You can stop now, all right? Yeah, and thank you for your offer. It’s appreciated.”
Luce was relieved to hear the phone snapping shut, but when she looked over at her father she could see how he was still struggling to calm himself. His head hung, and he clutched at the wall. As Luce watched he sighed, carefully straightened himself, and forced his mouth into a big smile. Only when the smile was in place did he turn to look at her. “Baby doll?” he said to her. He was trying hard to sound cheerful, but Luce could hear the crack in his voice. “You ever think it might be time for you and me to try settling down somewhere?”
Luce shook her head. “I like traveling with you.” Her father sat down next to her and ruffled her spiky hair.
“Oh, I like it too, doll. And you’re a real trouper. But I can’t help thinking sometimes that maybe it’s not the best life for you.” He couldn’t keep the smile together anymore, and his voice was so mournful that Luce sat up and threw her arms around him. “Peter’s saying he can find me work on the boats this spring. Pays good. And we can live at his place until we save enough to get our own. You know you’ve never even seen my hometown.” He gave Luce a sad smile. “We’ll get you going to school as a regular thing. And you should maybe have more of a normal social life than just hanging around with your old dad all the time.”
"You hate Peter!” Luce objected. "And he's always so horrible to you.”
"I do not hate him! He's my brother. That kind of bond goes deeper than, you know, whatever trouble we've had. Just more like there's a personality conflict.” He looked at the snow. "He's doing his best to help us, Lucette. It's generous of him. More than I've got any right to expect, after everything.” He tried to smile again, but it came out slanted and strange. "Not that any man in his correct mind wouldn’t have tried to steal your mother. But you know that's not sufficient excuse for how I acted. Not enough to repair Peter's feelings, anyway.”
"It's none of Peter's business!” Luce was starting to get angry; she didn't like hearing her father blame himself that way. "Mom loved you.”
"She did,” her father agreed. "She did do that. Gave me more and truer love than any human being can hope for in this life.” He was looking away, and Luce knew he didn't want her to see the tears in his eyes. "But the truth is that it would have been a whole lot better for her if she hadn't.” He was so upset that Luce didn't try to talk him out of his plan to move back to Pittley, Alaska, where he'd grown up. If she had only argued with him then, screamed, threatened to kill herself, then maybe he never would have gone out on the High and Mighty at all...
He’s dead, Luce thought. She couldn't have said why she was suddenly so sure of this; she only knew that it was inescapably true. Drowned. He won’t ever come back. And then she felt the sticky wooden table under her hands. There was a sudden crash. She looked over to see Peter splayed on the floor with a barstool tipped across his stomach, his arms swinging heavily as he tried, and failed, to right himself.
The bartender rushed around the counter and helped Peter up to a sitting position. His face was blotchy and swollen on one side. “You okay there?” the bartender asked.
Maybe Peter was trying to answer him in words, but it came out more like a growl. He managed to drag himself onto his feet, but Luce wasn’t sure how long he’d be able to stay upright. He was clinging to the edge of the bar for balance.
“I’ll get you a cup of black coffee,” the bartender said after a minute. “Shouldn’t have let you drink so much. Coffee, and then you better get your niece on home. It’s a school night.” He looked at Luce, and she got up and walked over. “Can you get home okay?”
“It’s almost two miles,” Luce told him. “And that’s if we take the shortcut. Along the cliffs.” The bartender tipped his head sideways.
“Maybe you should wait till I can get somebody to drive you, then. Don’t want Peter too close to any cliffs, his condition being like this.” It was the wrong thing to say. Peter pulled himself straighter and raised his eyebrows in a way that was probably supposed to seem dignified.
“I’m not in need of any coffee,” her uncle said with an exaggerated effort to enunciate clearly. It didn’t quite work. “And I’m perfectly capable of escorting my niece back home. The way you talk to her, it seems like you don’t recall who’s the adult in this family.”
“I didn’t mean anything like that, Peter,” the bartender soothed. He gave Luce a funny look, as if she were a fellow conspirator. “Just two miles is pretty far to be walking in the cold, and once my son’s off work he’ll be happy to give you a ride. Sit down and have a coffee while you wait for him.” The bartender checked his watch. “It’s twenty past eight now, and he’s off most nights by eight thirty.” Luce was amazed that it wasn’t at least midnight. The day had already dragged on for such a horribly long time. An image of the dead girl’s milky greenish face flashed in her mind again.
Peter shook his head. “Get your things, Luce.” She stared down; there was nothing to get. The bar was cold enough that she hadn’t even taken off her jacket. “When—we—get—home,” her uncle said laboriously, “I’ll check to see you’ve done all your homework properly, and if you have you can watch half an hour of TV before bed.” Of course Luce knew he was only saying that to impress the bartender. Her uncle had never checked her homework once, and Luce didn’t think he was about to start now. He locked one thick hand on the back of her neck and shoved her out through the bar’s dirty glass door. He didn’t even say good night to the bartender. Luce peered back to see the bartender watching them from the door. His forehead was wrinkled with worry, but when he saw Luce looking he smiled at her and waved. Luce didn’t dare to wave back, though. It would only make her uncle angrier, and she was already afraid of what he might do once they reached the house.
The sky above was vast and dark, but the clouds had thinned enough that a yellowish blot showed where the moon must be. Her uncle steered them toward the cliff path while the cold wind buffeted their faces. Neither of them spoke, and the only sounds were the wind in their ears and Luce’s fast soft steps alongside her uncle’s, which came slower and heavier, grinding the pebbles like teeth. He didn't let go of Luce's neck, and she didn't look at him. Below them a few beacon lights bobbed on the midnight blue harbor.
After a while her uncle wasn't walking beside her anymore, but behind her. He still had his left hand in a hard grip on her neck, and now his right hand curled around her shoulder and stroked her awkwardly. Luce didn't know what to think. Her uncle never touched her except to slap her. She wanted to pull away, but she couldn't take the risk of enraging him.
The path turned and led upward, and the harbor was behind them. Now the cloud-dulled moonlight cast its faint haze on crashing waves some eighty yards below.
They were still walking, but much more slowly. The dreamlike darkness filled Luce's eyes, and then she felt her uncle's hands slide down to grab her hips. He pulled her back so she was pressing on his body and rolled himself against her.
&
nbsp; She tried to cry out then. She tried to beg him to stop. Her voice was stuck deep inside her, and the night filled her mouth like a choking gas and she couldn't make a sound, not even when she heard the zipper of her jeans sliding down and felt his thick fingers groping hungrily under the fabric. Her legs shuddered the way glass does in the moment just before it breaks.
He pushed her down on the grass and she started to crawl away, but his hands were on her, pulling her back, digging inside her clothes. She could taste the long grass, feel the jagged stones slicing at her palms. His breath was loud and fast, and Luce gathered all her strength; she was going to at least try to fight, even though he was so much bigger than her. She would rake his eyes out, hurt him as much as she possibly could. Suddenly she didn’t care how angry she made him. She didn’t even care if he threw her off the cliff. "What reason could there be for her to stay alive when everyone who’d ever cared about her was dead, lost forever, and she was so utterly alone? With a desperate wrench of her torso she managed to flip herself over and he grappled with her, throwing one heavy knee onto her stomach. One leaden hand cracked across her face so hard that her head crunched into the stones, and she heard something pop in her neck. Pain swelled in so many parts of her body that she couldn’t keep track of it all: a dark confusion of aches.
The clouds tore back from the moon, and golden light spilled across Luce’s face. Her uncle Peter had his back to the moon so that all she could see was the black silhouette of his head and shoulders looming over her. His knee was still crushing into her gut, pinning her down, but after a second she realized that he had stopped yanking at her jeans. Luce’s heart was racing and her breath sounded like tearing paper. They stayed like that for so long that Luce thought it couldn’t be real, that she must have fallen into some other world.
