After the Fog Clears

by Lee Thompson

He hit the release and the boat slid smoothly off the rollers and onto the surface of the lake with a muffled smacking sound like flesh on flesh. Herman giggled every time. He wore a boonie hat he kept in a waterproof bag at the stern, where he was slumped, his fishing rod jutting from the helm like an old Viking battle ram. He doused himself with bug spray although it was too early in the season for any. He smiled back at Luther and Luther grinned, looking at Herman when he smiled like that, he couldn’t help it. He paddled them out along the shoreline and followed a bend to Herman’s favorite spot. They’d found it on their second trip to the lake (years ago now), when they’d been talking about how nice it’d be if their father had kept his nose clean and had been able to partake in this brother-brother time with them.

  Back around the bend there was something like a lagoon, the banks five feet high, crowded with trees, stumps in still water that looked like iced glass. Herman had cast his line and reeled it in, his face full of seriousness and concentration. He watched the V the coiling line made in the water. It all but hypnotized him. Luther liked it too, only not as much, but out here it was peaceful this early in the year, what felt like the first big thaw. There was the sound of breathing, the plunk of a jigger hitting the water, the soft wind of the spool. On top of that, Luther began to hear distant noises. He couldn’t identify them at first because they echoed across the gentle waters growing long with shadows and pools of dying sunlight.

  Herman quit drawing in his line and whispered, “You hear somebody digging and cursing?”

  Luther nodded. That’s what the sounds were.

  Whoever was digging up there on the other side of the bank was making quite a racket, the shovel sucking in the wet earth. Herman said, “What do you think he’s doing?”

  “None of our business.”

  “What if someone is hurt up there and needs help?”

  Luther thought, I know he ain’t hurt…

  Herman said, “You should check.”

  “Keep your voice down.”

  “Someone might need your help. I’d do it, I’d check, if I could.”

  Luther huffed. “Fine, but I don’t like it.”

  His back hurt as he rowed over to the lowest spot he saw on the bank. He eased the anchor into the water, not wanting Herman to drift away. The boat made little noises that seemed extremely loud to Luther, but he knew the sounds the man was making up there were masking it. He had nothing to worry about, only what might be waiting for him. Take a quick peek, get back in the boat, report the trouble to the police when he got home, let it become their problem.

  Now that he was this close he could hear the man clearly. He wasn’t speaking English, sounded instead like he was speaking in a dialect consisting completely of curse words and good old-fashioned Holy Spirit tongues. It sent shivers down his spine, made his insides feel too damn cold. He knew all about life-changing moments, everybody had them on a rare, random occasion. Herman was sitting helplessly, clasping the sides of the boat tightly, nodding, whispering, “Go on.” His normally spooked expression seemed severe in the long shadows. The sky was orange and blue and black. Luther thought, Can’t nothing happen to me or life is going to get a lot worse for him and Grandma…

  He knew he should turn back as he knelt there in the gathering darkness, his hands slicked by the mud of the bank, feeling like everything he held dear might slip out of his hands when they were so slick. The back of his neck was sweaty. But Herman was right, he had a responsibility to investigate this and make certain someone didn’t need his help, didn’t he? He’d never been able to stand by anyway when he saw something happening on the street, or in someone’s yard, or at school, or at a park. Too many people walked by, pretending they didn’t see or hear anything, as those in need suffered fates that someone offering assistance might have changed. Luther thought willfully distancing yourself from those in trouble was to willfully distance yourself from your own humanity.

  He wiped his face with his forearm and crawled up to the ridge, using the exposed roots as hand- and footholds. The man stabbed the shovel in the wet forest floor and hunched over something, grunting as he pulled it backward into the hole. Luther couldn’t see his face, just his outline. He was a stocky man with a block head, wide shoulders, the thick hips of a woman. Wasn’t any question what he’d labored into that hole in the ground, just a question of whom.

  Men killed for all kinds of reasons, but usually they boiled down to be for the fun of it, over a woman, or over money.

  The man stepped from the grave, looked down, and muttered something. He knelt then, as if to touch a close friend, or lover, one last time. But upon closer inspection Luther could see that he was simply tying his shoe. He stood again, dusted his hands together three brisk times, and his shoulders rose high beside his cinderblock head, then fell as he exhaled loudly. He tore the shovel from the earth and slung it over his shoulder. He walked between a large willow and a barren lilac bush and disappeared. Luther didn’t have any urge to follow him.

  The killer had the shovel (which could be a deadly weapon even in a child’s hands), but Luther figured he might also have a knife or a gun. There was Herman’s safety to consider as well. Luther was shaking as he descended the hill. His brother’s face shone in the darkness on the edge of the water. It’d be hell to row back to the boat launch and his car in the dark. They had a flashlight but he didn’t want to turn it on in case the man returned to the scene of the crime for any reason and saw the light out on the water. As he climbed back into the boat the coldness hit him. He shivered, thought about the Buick he’d seen at the landing. He worried the man would see his Impala, but there was little Luther could do about it. He whispered to Herman, “We’ll sit here for a bit. When we get close to the launch, I’ll wade in and make sure he’s gone.”

  “What was he doing?”

  “I don’t know,” Luther said. “I just got a bad vibe from him.”

  “Did you see what he was burying?”

  Luther shook his head. “It was too dark.”

  “Maybe it was treasure. Like gold or something.”

  “Maybe, at some point, to someone,” Luther said.

  TUESDAY

  14

  Raul had hoped Regina would return at breakfast, but he and Isaac were the only ones up at seven a.m. Geneva could sleep as long as she wanted to, although the sooner she awoke the better, because he was sick of her brother rummaging through their refrigerator and cupboards grabbing eggs, bacon, butter, bread, diving right into preparing a meal without so much as asking if it was all right by Raul. Isaac talked, a constant buzz of chatter, as he cooked and the house filled with a wonderful aroma. Raul and Geneva had never been big on breakfast, usually only consuming midmorning snacks to hold them over until lunch. But the scents caused his stomach to gurgle and his mouth watered. Isaac wasn’t interested in making conversation. There was no give and take, no pause for consideration, no questions expected or asked. For his part, Raul wasn’t really listening to him. Even as they sat at the table, Isaac talking just to make noise maybe, Raul’s thoughts were still on his wife and her best friend. His wife’s best friend. That was how he needed to think of Regina. It seemed impossible. There wasn’t going to be a clean break like she vocalized hope for last night. Things had been fine until yesterday. As bad as their betrayal seemed at times, it was something that never seemed life-destroying. But on top of Dominic’s death, or maybe because of the levity it brought, he could see how selfish and crass and tasteless they had been.

  He’d meant what he’d said to her: they didn’t deserve Geneva. It’d obviously upset her. She’d never struck him before. He hadn’t thought her capable of violence. But he realized now that he had made a simple mistake—while he was confessing his guilt and how the blame lay solely on their shoulders, Regina had thought and felt it many times, more so all day yesterday, as Geneva was at her most helpless and hopeless. He should have said nothing. Reflecting, he could see how she hadn’t needed to hear it, and it made him
feel the fool for letting his mouth shoot off without thinking.

  They had to break it off. That was the truth. Plain. Ugly. Painful.

  Isaac rinsed their plates and poured both of them more coffee. He sat down and said, “You see who was in that car last night?”

  “No.”

  “Did you recognize it?”

  “I’ve seen a hundred like it throughout the city. Too many like it at the cemetery. More poor people die than anyone else. You should see their families. They grieve just like the middle-class and the rich.”

  “What do you have planned for today?”

  “No plans.”

  “Need time to decompress?”

  “To what?”

  “You should do something,” Isaac said. “You stop living, stop moving for long, and you’ll seize up inside. It’ll kill Geneva too. I’m not really worried about her though. She’s a Hamilton. We’ve got steel.”

  “Are you saying you’re worried about me?”

  “You’re family.”

  “My family?”

  “You are family,” Isaac said.

  “What do you think I should do?”

  “For starters, stop fucking my sister’s friend. If you need help, I can take your place, she’ll forget all about you for a while.” He smiled. “You look like you want to kill me but you’re the asshole. Does my sister know?”

  “Not unless you told her.”

  “It’s not my place. You quit and you never mention it. Why hurt her more? Are you hearing me on this?”

  “Yes. You’re right.”

  “Agreeing doesn’t change anything.”

  “Don’t touch Regina,” Raul said.

  “Only if you don’t.”

  They heard Geneva walking toward the kitchen. Raul knew he looked guilty by her expression when she glanced his way and said in a toneless voice, “Morning.”

  He got up and poured her a cup of coffee. She took it to the table and sat down and Raul thought she might cry at any moment. She hadn’t brushed her hair or put on makeup. Her eyes were bagged and red-rimmed. She sipped her coffee. Her brother said, “Did you sleep?”

  “On and off. I kept waking up in the night with the urge to go to Dom’s room and check on him. It felt the way it had when he was first born and I was overprotective, sometimes paranoid.”

  Raul said, “Did you go in there?”

  She nodded and looked into the mug. “I sat on his floor for at least an hour. Once I was in there and I could smell him, it was hard to leave.” She raised her head and said, “He was such a good kid. Caring. He wasn’t stingy. He was genuinely interested in other people. Maybe that would have changed when he got older, but I don’t think it would have. I believe the world lost something very special. He may have never changed the lives of millions, but I’m certain there would have been a dozen lives that will be sorrier without the place he would have filled in them. Those people will never know what they’re missing. In a way, they’re lucky, and in another way, we’re luckier than them, despite what happened.”

  She studied her brother for a moment. “You missed out knowing a very special boy. You could have spent time with him, loved on him, taught him, laughed and played with him, but you didn’t. Think on that.”

  “I know it,” Isaac said. “There’s no excuse. But I’m here now, for as long as you need me.”

  Raul said, “We don’t need you.”

  “Isaac,” Geneva said, “you can stay as long as you want. I’m glad you’re here. Dominic would have been glad too. I think a boy needs his uncle. You probably would have surprised us with how good you’d have been with him. He would have learned things from you that me and Raul could have never taught him.”

  Raul cleared his throat, hoping she’d stop. Where was she getting these ideas from? They were all conjecture. When Geneva started talking again, she nodded at him and said, “You and Raul may have liked each other through Dom.”

  “Maybe,” Isaac said. He smiled at Raul, then said, “Me and Raul are already becoming friends. We had a little heart-to-heart over breakfast this morning.”

  She said, “So, what now? Any ideas?”

  Raul wasn’t sure what she was referring to.

  Her brother said, “You’ll learn to accept it. You’ll stumble around, blindly, trying to find a sense of peace and acceptance until one day it’s a little easier than yesterday. It’ll get a little easier tomorrow. Seeing other people with their kids, especially those around Dominic’s age, will kill you a bit, you know? Maybe talk to a grief counselor, separately or together. It can’t hurt to have someone you can spill it all on without any sense they’re going to judge you.”

  “That’s good advice,” she said. “It seems impossible that this feeling, these feelings, will ever fade, but I know they will. The crazy thing is I don’t want them to…”

  She wiped her eyes. Raul had always hated to see her cry but it was when he thought she was at her most beautiful.

  15

  Geneva could not explain to anyone what it felt like to expose herself to Raul and her brother. As she’d spoken, the words seemed to rise up from a well deep inside her and they sprang from her mouth in a torrent. It was as if she were outside herself for a few minutes, an alien feeling, she’d only experienced it a couple times in her life. Raul and Isaac were speechless for a minute and she sat there not needing them to say anything. The quiet was nice. Letting it out, exhausting herself with speech, was nice. What either of them thought of her didn’t matter. She didn’t need sympathy, or kind words, or an embrace. Those things could not touch her loss or bring anything more than temporary comfort. She suspected they would only give her a hunger for more of the same, create a dependency. She knew what she would have to do to deal with the empty spaces inside her. She had already begun by simply letting go, by remembering. She would dwell on the things she had loved about Dom, and all the wonderful lessons he had taught her in his few, short years.

  She said to Raul, “You need to go arrange the service.”

  “Right now?”

  “Take Isaac with you.”

  “It’s only eight.”

  Isaac stood and slapped Raul roughly on the shoulder and said, “Let’s go.”

  Raul hung his head, rubbed his hands together, patted his pockets, said in a pitiful voice, “I need to find my keys.”

  After they left, Geneva drank another cup of coffee and went to her son’s room and tried to smile at the small way Dom had stamped this house with his existence, his developing personality. She stood in there, touching his clothing and smelling them, and sorting through his toys so she could set his three favorites on his dresser. The shades were drawn and she had the urge to open them and let the new day’s light bask the room. But it was too soon for that, she wasn’t ready.

  She sat on his bed and called Regina. She answered on the first ring, as if she were expecting the call. “How are you this morning, Genny?”

  “Can you come over?”

  “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

  Geneva hung up and waited. She had learned, or was learning, that the thoughts she chose to entertain would be what would make or break her. This moment, these times, were for reflecting, considering, making tough decisions. When she’d first escaped to Michigan and set her suitcase on the Greyhound terminal’s floor in Saginaw, she saw all the people, young and old and mostly poor. They represented every person she’d ever met. There were a hundred different lifetimes sleeping and crying and laughing and looking bored around her. Regina, sitting on a bench by herself, twenty-two years old, had made an escape as well. She was the only person who looked out of place. Everybody else seemed to belong in this limbo. Regina sat straight, manicured nails steady in her lap, her fingers motionless, her big eyes watching the boredom and aggression and impatience on other’s faces, in their body language. Her suitcase was red leather. Her watch looked expensive, as did the pearl necklace she wore, and the smart black suit. A man, grubby, white-haired, ree
king of a lifetime of addiction, approached her. The beggar asked Regina for a dollar, his hand out, placating eyes astir with hope, his face shining with some kind of sickness. Regina ignored his first few entreaties, looking straight ahead. He grew more agitated and leaned forward, his hands gripping his knees. He called her a snooty bitch. Regina looked up into his face, only inches from her face, and said, “Go brush your teeth.” He blinked as if he had misheard her. Then she said, “Piss off. Bother someone else.”

  Geneva sat by her. The man looked around, either seeking help, or trying to remember where he was, or considering if he could assault her and flee without too much trouble. He hovered around them without saying anything. It was off-putting and Geneva pulled a dollar bill from her change purse, folded it into a paper airplane. The beggar watched her. Regina too, shaking her head in the smallest of motions, suggesting perhaps that Geneva was a fool to waste time or money on this man. Geneva sent the money plane flying toward the exit. The man beamed and chased after it, nearly toppling a fat woman in a blue skintight cyclist suit. Regina said, “They’re all the same, aren’t they?”

  Geneva smiled and said, “You can give them what they want and get them away from you at the same time. I learned that on an army base when I was fourteen.”

  “Where are you headed?”

  “This is it,” Geneva said. “That was my last dollar.”

  Regina cocked an eyebrow and studied her face. “You’re not joking.”

  “Where are you headed?”

  “I haven’t decided yet.”

  “Husband trouble?”

  “Family. Father. No husband. I don’t want any dead weight.” Regina sighed and looked at her nails. Over the rest of the day, there at the bus stop, and then later at a small restaurant on Tittabawasse, they shared laughs and bonded quickly. Regina came from a rich family that she had felt constricted her more and more the older she got. They had expectations for her that she had not been meeting, and worse, didn’t want to. They were a huffy bunch, wonderful at feigning shock and hurt, and they were brutal when voicing their disappointment. She’d asked nothing of them when she’d left—she’d saved what she could since she’d been a child, and she hadn’t told anyone she was off.