Monsters: The Ashes Trilogy (8 page)

“I have something to tell you, honey. About that phone call?” Her dad
slowly retracts his line, the reel going
click-click-click
as he jerks the
rod up and down, up and down. Crappies love a jumping jig. “The
one last night?”

“Uh-huh?” Ellie’s not really listening. A light breeze, still chilly in
early June, whispers through the down on her arms. The water’s so
glassy there’s a whole other sky trapped underwater. She should be
focused on her float, but her attention is on a male loon drifting
along the far shore. When it tilts its head, she can see the red flash of
its eyes. Lifting its neck, the loon wails, a spooky call—the sound of
Minnesota’s Boundary Waters and fishing with her dad—that always
sends fingers creeping down Ellie’s spine.

“Cold?” Her dad slips an arm around her shoulders. “Want my
sweatshirt?”
“No.” She snuggles. He smells of Dove soap and scorched sand,
because Iraq never washes off. After his first deployment, he climbed
into Grandpa Jack’s shower with all his clothes and gear on as she
perched on the tub and Grandpa leaned, unsmiling, against the jamb.
I washed everything before I left,
her dad said, cranking the shower full
blast.
But watch this.
The water gushed out clear and drained out
muddy gray, which surprised her because Grandpa Jack did a newspaper story on the troops and her dad sent video of a sandstorm.
The color of Iraq then was this really funky neon orange, not dead
ash-gray.
Two minutes after you take a shower, you’re dirty again
, her
daddy said, through spray
. Stuff never comes out.
(Grandpa Jack was
pissed for days after, though:
All that damn sand clogging my drains
. But
she caught him carefully scraping crusts of leftover sand into a small
jar, like a souvenir.)
“Just watching the loons,” she adds. She wishes her dad wouldn’t
talk. This is the time she likes best: before a fish strikes. Once the
bait’s taken, it’s as if something breaks, because what happens next
is a matter of life and death. That fish’s life is over, just like that, and
all because Ellie danced a jumping jig with a juicy waxworm on that
particular morning when a crappie swam by and decided,
Saaay, that
looks pretty interesting.
“Oh.” Her dad pauses. “Anyway, that phone call.”
“Yeah?” From the brush on shore, the mom loon suddenly
emerges, with two brown-black fluff balls. Ellie feels a jolt of excitement. The morning’s so still, the wind’s sigh so light, she can hear
the chicks’ peeps and the mom’s soft hoots. “Look,” she whispers.
“Babies!”
“Uh-huh.” He squeezes her arm. “Honey, I need to tell you something important.”
“Sure.” Her eyes are glued to the peeping chicks. The dad glides
over as the mother slips into the water and the babies follow:
plopplop!
“What?”
“I have to leave again,” he says.
For a second, the words just don’t sink in. Across the lake, the
loon family is dodging around lily pads. Somewhere close she hears
the
plunk
of a fish shattering the surface to snatch a bug. But inside
everything has gone as dead and ashy as Iraqi sand.
“What?” she says, sitting up fast, as if she’s the waxworm on the
jig now. The adult loons jerk their heads, too, as if they’re just as
startled by the news. “You just got back!”
“Six months ago,” he says, his eyes on the water, jumping that
jig as if his life depends on it. Her dad keeps his hair military-short,
and a red flush creeps into the fish-belly skin behind his ears and at
the base of his neck. “It was supposed to be a year, but they need
me. One of the other handlers and his dog were . . . they’re out of
commission.” The way he says it, she knows it means
dead
, but that’s
a taboo subject, what her daddy calls bad juju. KIA is a jinx; say
dead
,
it’s like stepping on a crack. Men and dogs don’t die; they’re
out of
commission.
“Mina’s with another handler, but he’s rotating out, and
I know her, so . . .”
It’s not a she.
I’m
a she.
That’s what Ellie wants to say.
It’s a dumb
dog.
It is as if her dad and Grandpa Jack have decided she’s like this
Mina: must be time to rotate Ellie to another handler.
“When?” That’s not what she wants to say either, but fighting
won’t help. She bounces her gaze from him to his water-twin. “Never
mind. Doesn’t matter.”
“Two weeks.” In the water, the twin dad turns her a look. “Got to
square some things away, but we can . . .” His voice trails off. She can’t
even imagine what he thought he could say to make things better.
She doesn’t say
okay.
Or
I hate you.
Or
every time you go, it’s like you
die and I’m so scared I die, too.
Besides, one is a fib. She has no interest in the loons now. Instead, she stares down at the little water-girl,
trapped next to her water-dad, who says—

“. . . much longer?”
“Huh?” Ellie blinked away from the memory of that June morn
ing and into the here and now of March. Stuffed with high clouds,
the afternoon sky was the color of boiled egg white. As she looked
up from the blue-black eye of her ice-fishing hole, she had to raise a
hand against the glare. “What did you say?”
“I said, how much longer?” Eli’s long eyelashes were feathered
with frost. Flecks of ice clung to his scarf and dangled from a fraying
watch cap, like Christmas ornaments. His cheeks were cranberry red.
Cradling his rifle, he stamped his feet with an exaggerated shudder.
“I’m
freezing
. How can you
do
that?” He chinned the rod in her naked
right hand. “My fingers would fall off.”
“That’s because you’re not moving around,” she said, returning
her attention to the rod and gently playing it, up and down, up and
down, jumping that jig. To be honest, her hand
was
turning icy, the
nails bluing with cold. The few times she and Grandpa Jack ice-fished,
he’d always started a fire on shore so she could warm up with hot
cocoa and charred brats and blackened hot dogs. Her mouth watered
at the memory. She would
kill
for a hot dog. With mustard and relish.
Grilled onions.
“You okay?” Eli’s eyebrows, honey-colored and delicate, pinched
together.
“Yeah.” She worked to stopper the sigh. Something her grandpa
said drifted through:
If wishes were fishes. . . .
No good wishing for
anything these days. You just ended up depressed or in tears, or both,
and she’d be darned if she bawled in front of Eli. He was cute, and
despite the fact that he was twelve, they hung together. ( Jayden called
them the
Killer Es
, which Ellie just didn’t get.) But Eli could also be
kind of a goof. Like, sometimes she thought she ought to be guarding
him.
She tilted her head at two nearby holes where she’d lowered
stringers. “Could you take those back? I have to break down the tipups, and since I’ve got, like, fifteen of
those
. . .”
“Me?” Eli wasn’t fond of fish slime, and Ellie had had a very
good afternoon: fourteen black crappies, all ten-inchers. “Well,” Eli
said, twisting to look toward shore and their patient horses waiting
beneath drooping boughs of tall hemlock. Nearby, a clutch of crows
hopped over the snow, probably hoping for a nice steaming mound of
fish guts, while a stern-looking, solitary gull perched on a thumb of
icy rock. “I guess I
can
wait. You’ll need help with the auger.”
Right, so then I carry
all
the fish
and
the tackle.
On the other hand,
she knew what Eli really wanted to avoid was
storing
the tackle. Well,
avoiding the place that was
near
where they stored tackle. Even the
horses hated that part of the woods. She wasn’t wild about it either,
but at least she wasn’t such a
girl
.
“Well,” she said, withdrawing her rod and reaching, with studied
casualness, to an inside parka pocket. Pulling out a plastic container,
she popped the lid. In a bed of sawdust, warmed by her body heat, were
thick white maggots, each about as long as the tip of her pinky. She
delicately tweezed one fat boy from the wriggling mass. “Oh
kaaay
,”
she said, stabbing the maggot with the jig’s hook. It was really a waste;
she’d already hooked one. But Eli needed a fire lit under his butt. “If
you want to
waaait
and help me with the
taaackle
. . .”
“God!” Eli’s lips, bright as cherries and almost too delicate for a
boy, corkscrewed. “I
hate
it when you do that.”
“Nom, nom.” Plucking out another waxworm, Ellie smacked her
lips. “
Taastee—”
“Gah.” Eli did a mock heave, but he was also grinning.
Sunny
was
what Grandpa Jack would’ve said. “Fine, you win. Just
stop
.” Eli reeled
up a steel chain stringer and eight dripping black-spotted crappies,
attached via snap hooks through their gills, from an ice hole. “Gah,”
he said again, holding the flapping fish at arm’s length as Roc, a gray
bullet of a mutt, bounded up with Mina on his heels. “My gloves
always smell like fish,” Eli complained as the dogs pranced excited
circles. “Roc always smells like fish. My
saddle
smells like sardines.”
She bit back a snark about killer farts, although even
she
was tired
of smoked crappie and bluegill. But a
hot dog . . .
“At least everyone’s
eating.”
“And you always smell like fish, too.” Eli dragged up the second
stringer. “How much longer are you going to be, so I know when it’s
time to get worried that you’ve been eaten?”
“Oh, ha-ha. Maybe another hour, hour and a half.” It was just
something to say. Since Alex had Mickey Mouse, Ellie hadn’t the foggiest what time it was. “Not too long. It’s still plenty light.”
“You’re sure you’re okay with the tackle?”
“Of course I’m okay. I’m always okay,” she muttered under her
breath, but she called Mina to heel and tipped a cheery wave. The
crows perked up as Eli neared shore, but when he passed to his horse
without stopping, they lifted in a black cloud to scold him on his way.

Only two tip-ups had anything: seven-inchers that she released. With
Mina trotting alongside, she hooked a handle of an old plastic primer
bucket she used for her tackle and headed over the ice to holes she’d
drilled this morning
waaay
out there.

This lake, which was very deep, was fed by a spring located somewhere off the western shore. That meant the water nearest the spring
was much warmer and the lake never entirely froze. Instead, the ice
sheet petered out in a ragged scallop of slushy ice from which she
always kept a healthy distance. As she neared the far tip-up, she saw
the orange flag standing upright and felt a burst of elation.

“All
right
,” she said to the dog. “We got something.” Jogging the
last little way, she dropped to her knees and worked at unhooking
her line. As soon as she felt it—how light the line was—her excitement died. “Well, shoot.” Something had grabbed the bait and split.
But then she saw how the monofilament line curled and realized
there was no sinker at the end, no weight at all. The dripping line
had snapped in two. She’d used monofilament on purpose; it had a
lot more give and cushioned the set of the hook so the fish’s mouth
wouldn’t tear.

“Wow, that was one strong fish.” And big. Walleye liked deep
water. So did pike. Lots of meat on those fish. “So maybe I should
use braided line,” she said to Mina, who only licked water from her
fingers
.
“And auger the holes a little wider if we’re going for the big
boys.”

Unclipping her knife, a stainless steel Leek, from a pants pocket,
she deployed the blade with a practiced flick of her thumb. In a very
small, dark closet of her mind, she wished she could show Tom and
Alex what she knew how to do now. But she always wished that.

You have to stop this.
She used the Leek’s sharp point to pick out the
knot of ruined line, then dumped the tip-up into her primer pail. For
the past week, ever since Chris, she’d been thinking way too often
about Tom and Alex, much more than was good for her.

This is your home now, so just deal.
She should think about things
she could actually do something about, like how to catch more and
bigger fish dreaming their slow winter dreams in deeper water under
the thinner, weaker ice of the shelf. More holes meant more time
keeping them clear with her axe, though. Crunching back toward
shore, she worried the problem. Grandpa Jack used rubber mats from
his old pick up for fish-hole covers. But finding a car might be tough.
Isaac and Hannah and a bunch of other kids were once Amish and
still kind of big into God. All the places they stayed were Amish, and
Amish didn’t use cars. But maybe regular carpet or cut-up rug?

“I should ask Jayden,” she said to Mina. “He’s like Tom. You know
. . . a fixer-upperer? Like, remember that old truck Tom and I . . .”
Stop.
Clamping down on that memory, she thumbed away a
fast, stinging tear. She had to cut it out, this dumb looping back to
Tom and Alex, or her dad and Grandpa Jack. Her hand snuck to her
neck and found a length of leather cord from which dangled a small
wooden pendant. Hannah said the charm, some weird Amish or
German magic thing, would protect her from evil or sad thoughts.
Ha.
It was just an upside-down peace sign. Dumb. Like it did any
good for all the memories that kept slipping out of that dark closet.
The ones of Tom always led to Alex and vice versa. Each came to the
same end: with Tom, his face twisted in agony as the snow bloomed
a violent rose-red under his leg; and Alex, her hands painted with his
blood, screaming,
You bastards, you
bastards
!
Good-luck charms?
Ha.
Her fingers fell from the leather cord.
She
was total bad-luck juju. It was her fault Tom got shot
. Tom said he was
only trying to take care of his people and Alex saved me from the mountain
and now look, because of me, probably they’re both—
“Nooo.”
She caught the moan with a cupped hand. Another fast tear
chased down her cheek. Now she wished she’d kept Alex’s whistle.
Dumb to give that away. A whistle was actually something you could
use
, not a stupid piece of wood with a dumb German doohickey. The
whistle was Alex, too.
Just like the letter from her mom.
Placing a palm
over her heart, Ellie felt the envelope crinkle in its Ziploc, folded in an
inner pocket. She hadn’t been able to stop Harlan from stealing Alex’s
parents.
But I got your mom’s letter, Alex. I saved her for you.
As, perhaps, Alex and Tom might save her? Not that Hannah
or Jayden or Eli were so horrible, but Ellie just couldn’t shake the
idea that things would never be right again until they were all back
together. Which had led to the whistle. Giving Alex’s whistle to
Tobe had been partly impulse, partly design. Tobe was so sick and
scared about being left behind. She’d hoped the whistle—that
Alex
,
she guessed—would cheer him up, make him strong the same way it
made her feel both better and really sad at the same time.
You’ll give it
back when you get well
, she’d said.
But in the back of her mind, a place she didn’t visit often because
it hurt too much, she’d also nursed another idea. The night before
Harlan and Marjorie and Brett, Tom and Alex had talked about Rule.
She remembered the rustle of maps and Tom’s voice.
She’d
tried
going there after Harlan, only she’d gotten
so
lost. It was just luck
that Jayden found her. So, maybe, when the boy from Rule came and
took Tobe to get better, someone would find the whistle and then
show Alex. (Why anyone
would
, she didn’t know. It was stupid. But
it was something, like a message in a bottle.) Then Alex would know
where to find her, and
she’d
tell Tom—because, of course, Alex
would’ve saved him—and they would come for
her
. . . just like that.
If Tom was really okay, too. If he was still alive. If he wasn’t like
poor Chris, the boy from Rule who had only tried to help.
Until Hannah had gone and done what she’d done and couldn’t
take it back.