The Good House: A Novel (35 page)

“It was a body. It was a dead person,” Luke cried, running to the bow and pointing.

They were at least fifty feet away, and Manny was scolding the boys for sailing out of the harbor on such a windy day, when the boys cried out, “There it is,” pointing to something floating in the water ahead. Manny had a very sick feeling about what he saw drifting in the current. A fishing boat had sunk off Gloucester when Manny was a kid, and Manny was out on his dad’s boat when one of the bodies rose from the bottom of the sea. He never forgot the man’s face. He still had dreams about it. When they got closer to what was clearly, now, a floating body, the boys cried out, suddenly strident and confident in the company of the men.

“That’s it. AWWWW, SICK,” Luke cried.

Manny turned and barked at the boys. “Shut the fuck up and get astern. Don’t look at it. I mean it. I don’t want you kids seeing this shit, ya hear?”

“Yes, sir. Okay,” the boys said, and they scurried to the back of the boat.

It was a body. Facedown, drifting toward shore. Manny grabbed an arm. The skin was spongy with bloat, yet the limb itself was stiff and ice-cold to the touch. It was clear that the body had been floating for quite some time. Manny noticed the way the legs and arms dangled like limp sausages below the body, acting like draglines or ballasts—keeping the body from turning over.

Joe wordlessly tossed Manny a coil of rope and then grabbed the ship-to-shore radio to call the Harbor Patrol. Manny used a long pole to keep the body alongside the boat. He used the rope to fashion a harness around the chest of the body, then across the shoulders. He did all this without turning the body over. “So the kids couldn’t see,” he’d explain later. In truth, he would eventually confide in Frank, he couldn’t bring himself to turn it over and look at the dead person’s face. He knew what the teeth and pinchers of the underwater scavengers did to a codfish, and he could see that already some toes and fingers were missing. So Manny leaned over, his back wrenched in agony, and he held the body by the rope harness, his hands moving back and forth like a puppeteer working a life-size marionette for an audience many fathoms below.

*   *   *

Rebecca McAllister wasn’t involved with the search for Jake Dwight that Memorial Day weekend. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to help; she just had no idea that he was missing. Rebecca wasn’t as anchored to the town and its citizens as some of us locals. She wasn’t in regular contact with the other moms and she never watched the morning news. She had returned very early Sunday morning from Nantucket. The boys were staying with Brian, but Rebecca made an excuse to return to Wendover and drove back alone. She needed to speak to Peter.

She left the Cape before dawn and was back in Wendover by nine. She had driven up to her house on the rise on the back roads and had thought the groups of people walking along the roadside as she passed were doing some kind of annual spring cleanup—the town did organize that kind of thing every year. Rebecca had been up all night and now that she was home, she wanted to be with Betty.

When she arrived in the barn, the mare lifted her gray head from her hay and nudged Rebecca when she entered her stall; then she returned to her breakfast, munching peacefully. Rebecca leaned against the mare, one arm over her withers, the other looped under her thick neck, and she pressed her wet cheek into her mane. The wonderful musky odor of horse filled her, she told me later, not with the usual joy but, instead, with sadness and longing. Peter was planning to take away all her joy. He already had. She couldn’t even find happiness in her beloved Betty.

When Betty finished the last of her hay, Rebecca quickly brushed her, bridled her, and led her out of the paddock and onto the driveway. She moved the mare over to the fence and stepped up onto it so that she could swing her leg over the mare’s broad back, and then they started off down the drive.

They made their way down Wendover Rise. The road is quite steep near the top, and Rebecca leaned back to help Betty balance her weight over her hind end. The sure-footed mare plodded along happily. They were headed for the beach. The pony knew that soon she would be able to splash about in the cool water.

There’s a small wooded area of marshland called Steer Swamp near the bottom of the rise, with a path that leads to Hart’s Beach. Rebecca always cut through the trail surrounding the swamp to avoid the busy beach road, and that morning Betty turned onto the path on her own. She knew the way. Rebecca was thinking about Peter. She was thinking about how she wouldn’t let him leave her. It wasn’t the right thing—for him, or for her. For anybody. She had spoken to him briefly, several days before, and now he wasn’t answering his cell phone. He had taken a rather threatening tone, now that she thought of it, which was uncharacteristic of him. He kept warning her to think about what she was doing and telling her how desperate he was.

She had yelled at him. “YOU’RE desperate? What about me? You can’t just abandon me. I won’t let you go, Peter. If you do, I’m going to report you to the administrators of that new hospital. I know you don’t believe I’d do it, but I will.”

“Rebecca, think carefully, now,” he had warned her again. “Just watch your step.”

“What are you going to do?” she had scoffed. “Kill me?”

Now she regretted mocking him. This wasn’t the way to make him come around. She would call him when she returned. She would be more reasonable and she knew that she could convince him to be more reasonable, too. San Francisco was a terrible place to live. Did he have any idea how much it rained there?

Suddenly, the mare spooked and spun. Rebecca almost fell to the ground.

“Whoa, Betty, shit … whooaaaa.”

Betty was snorting and spinning. Rebecca, who was riding bareback in shorts and sneakers, was only able to stay on Betty by wrapping her long legs around her sides and clutching a handful of mane.

“Whoa. Hooooa.”

The mare stood then, frozen. She held her breath like a deer who has just spotted the hunter, thinking, perhaps, that if she stood perfectly still, the predator wouldn’t see her. Rebecca held her breath, too. Then she heard a rustling in the bushes, which caused the mare to spin again and rear. Rebecca couldn’t hold on. She slid off, managing to land on her feet, and she held the reins in her hand as the mare reared again, trying to pull herself away.

“Betty. WHO’S THERE? Betty,” Rebecca cried out. Then she saw it—a dark figure moving through the thick marsh grass toward her. She called out again.

“Who’s there? Who is it?” called Rebecca, terrified.

She heard a splash, followed by a strange wailing.

Rebecca stepped toward the sound, Betty stomping after her, snorting with fright, the mud making great sucking sounds with each step of her hooves.

Rebecca pushed her way through the swamp grass, and then she saw him. It was a boy. It was Cassie Dwight’s son, Jake. He was filthy and staggering away from her through the boggy wetland, looking over his shoulder at her fearfully, tripping, rising, tripping again.

The child was soaked and shivering. Bloody scratches marked his face.

“Jake,” Rebecca cried. The child kept moving away. “No. Jake, come back.” The panic in Rebecca’s voice further unnerved the pony and she snorted in fright, then whinnied loudly. Jake stopped, frozen, facing away from them.

Rebecca stood still. It was so quiet there in the marsh. Rebecca told me later that she wondered why it was so silent. You couldn’t even hear birds or peepers. There was not a sound, not the slightest breeze.

Betty sniffed the air and upon sensing that Jake was a human, not a bear, but a human child, she let out a long sigh and then lowered her head and grazed on the marsh grass.

Jake turned and watched the mare. The grass was long and had wispy tufts that tickled the mare’s muzzle, so she blew loud
pppppbbbbbbb
noises through her lips as she grazed. Rebecca was tempted to call the boy’s name again—he was shivering so hard, and now she saw that his lips were chapped and flaked. He looked so ravaged that she started to cry in desperation for him, but now that he was facing them, she feared frightening him, so she just stood quietly next to Betty, tears streaming.

No, Jake, no. Don’t run away. Come to me,
she thought, but she remained silent, and after a few long minutes, the boy started moving toward them, his head cocked slightly to the side, his gaze on the mare’s face.

“Sneakahs. I want Sneakahs,” he said. “Sneakahs, please.”

Rebecca looked at the child’s bare feet and thought that he wanted shoes, not knowing that he was calling out the name of his beloved cat. Betty lifted her head, her ears pricked toward the boy, munching away thoughtfully at a mouthful of grass; then she lowered her head again. Jake splashed through the small boggy area until he was quite close to them, his feet sinking into the cold mud. “Sneakahs,” he moaned. Betty pushed her nose toward the boy to sniff him. Betty had always liked Rebecca’s own boys—it was only men she hated—and Rebecca didn’t worry that the mare would bite him. Betty just sniffed at the air around the boy, and then she was about to tear at another patch of grass when the boy made a loud purring sound. Betty swung her head toward Jake again, and this time she took a step toward him, very curious about the sound coming from his lips.

Jake raised his hand and touched the mare’s muzzle. The purring vibrations moved through his body, and Betty must have found the sensation on the tender skin around her muzzle quite pleasing, because she just stood there, letting him rest his hand on her nose. Jake purred and smiled.

After a moment, Rebecca gently tugged on the mare’s reins, pointing her head in the direction of the road. Then she turned her back to the boy and the mare and walked very slowly. Horses don’t like to follow you when you’re staring at them, and she reasoned that the boy might feel the same way, so she just stepped slowly back along the path and the pony followed her. When Rebecca glanced over her shoulder, she saw that the boy kept his hand on the mare’s muzzle and walked at her side, making the loud purring sound. Rebecca worried that Betty might step on the child’s bare feet with her iron-clad hooves, but Betty kept her head out to the side a little, toward the boy, pushing him away slightly to keep him just far enough away from her feet that she wouldn’t step on his toes. She loved the vibration of his touch and the sense of a small living thing at her side, a small needy thing that followed her. And with that a vague memory of the smell of birth and milk and then joy rushed through her veins. I’m a mom; I know how she must have felt. I can imagine the tingling in her udder when she pushed her nose into the child’s small hand.

The path was rough with stones and roots; they had to move slowly. Rebecca tried to guide them around the worst parts, mindful always of Jake’s bruised and bloody bare feet. At last, they arrived at the road. Rebecca steered the mare and the boy to the roadside and was just trying to figure out how they would ever make it up the steep hill to her house when a pickup pulled up. It was Frank. The truck screeched to a halt and Jake immediately began flapping his hands and imitating the screeching sound, which made Betty startle and jump away from him.

“No … Betty,” Rebecca said.

Frank jumped out of his car and started toward them, and Betty flattened her ears back against her head. She swung her haunches out toward Frank, lifting one of her hind legs menacingly.

“Frank, wait, stay back,” Rebecca said.

Jake was walking back in the direction of the woods, flapping his hands and making little screeching sounds, like the truck’s brakes.

Nobody moved for a moment; then Betty lowered her head and cropped away at the nice green roadside grass. Rebecca started to make the
pppppbbbbbb
sound with her lips—the mare’s sound—and immediately Jake stopped and stared at the horse. Then he started with the loud purring again. He limped back to the mare’s side, and Frankie called out to Rebecca, “Watch the mare.” But she said, “Don’t worry, she won’t hurt him. Can you call his mom, Frank? Can you call Cassie and tell her we’re here?” The tears were really flowing then. “He really needs his mom. Call her, Frank.”

Frank doesn’t carry a cell phone, but he had his fire-dispatch radio and he radioed Sleepy Haskell, who was with the Dwights.

“We’ve got Jake. He’s okay. We’re down the bottom of the rise, just before the path to the swamp. No lights and sirens, Sleepy. And don’t anybody else come down here. Just you and Cassie, Sleepy, keep it quiet,” Frank said, knowing that all the first-responders in the county were listening in on their radios and scanners, and that this warning, coming from him, would be taken seriously.

When Sleepy arrived with Cassie and Patch, Jake ran into his mother’s arms. Patch and Cassie showered Rebecca with tearful thanks after she gave them the quick details of how she and the mare had found him, and then they bundled the child into the squad car and sped off to have him examined by a doctor.

Frankie stayed there, alone with Rebecca. They didn’t speak. He watched Rebecca try to pull herself up onto the mare’s bare back. She was drenched in sweat and swatting away the pesky flies that now swarmed around her and the mare. She wept and swore, trying to lead the mare to a boulder, but the mare kept stepping away before Rebecca could mount.

Frank walked over to help, and Rebecca said, “Watch out, Frank. You know she’ll kick you.”

But Frank grunted at the mare, “Watch yerself, Mama, watch it now, shhhh,” and he ignored her flattened ears and angry foot stomping. He stepped to Rebecca’s side and gave her a leg up with his linked hands, hoisting her up onto the mare’s back. Then he watched Rebecca turn the mare and start up the road to their home—back up to the old Barlow place, up at the top of the rise.

twenty-two

Tess and I realized, before we even parked my car back at my office, that Jake had been found. Wendover Green was still swarming with people, but now they were all hugging one another and wiping away tears and smiling. When we joined the group, we heard the news. The McAllister woman had found him, we were told. Already the crowd had managed to construct, collectively and unconsciously, a legend, as communities tend to do in this type of situation. Having been given only the bare skeleton of a story about the events surrounding the rescue of the child—something about Rebecca McAllister, her horse, the boy—they had filled in the gaps and added flesh to the thing in order to make it more real. Rebecca had taken it upon herself to search for the boy on horseback. She followed his tracks into Steer Swamp. He was asleep when she found him, but she woke him up and managed to get him onto the back of the horse. Then she climbed up behind him and rode out of the swamp, where Frank and Sleepy met them. It didn’t add up to me, but what did it matter? Jake had been found. He was fine.