The Peripatetic Coffin and Other Stories (14 page)

Robert’s father was quiet. Then he said, “Let’s do this, then. My wife’s waiting for us.”

“On the boat?” the man said.

“On the boat.”

The man laughed, and looked at his shoes and then looked at the sky like he was checking the weather. “No, she’s not,” he said. His tone was friendly, as if he were kidding an old friend. “Why would you say something like that?”

R
obert followed his father, who followed the man over the rocks. They walked with their backs to the forest, moving slowly, the man not looking at them. From behind it looked to Robert like the man was covering his mouth. He picked up his pace, and as they approached the end of the outcropping he was almost at a run. He put some distance between them, then he suddenly stopped and turned. “It’s—” He stumbled. “I’m down here,” he said. He was pointing, but Robert couldn’t see at what.

Robert’s father lightly put his hand on the back of his son’s neck. “There’s no easier way down?” he said.

“Swim,” the man said. His eyes were wild. “I swimmed.”

Robert noticed the man’s mouth was bleeding slightly. The man looked at Robert like he’d just remembered him and smiled. One of his front teeth was smeared brown. He looked like he was trying to keep from laughing. “I swum to be here with you today,” he said.

“You all right?” Robert’s father said.

The man shrugged and looked over his shoulder at the ocean.

“We’re leaving,” Robert’s father said to his son. Then he turned to the man. “We’re leaving now.”

“You can’t,” he said. “I’m just down there.”

Robert was aware of something passing between his father and the man but couldn’t place it. His father was kneading his shoulder, pressing him into his body.

“Come down here,” the man said. “Two’s enough.”

“No,” his father said. Robert felt his stomach tighten. He was getting dizzy. He thought he might throw up. “We’re leaving.”

R
obert walked quickly with his father behind him toward where they had come out of the woods. “Move,” his father said. He was worried they wouldn’t be able to see the trailhead, but it was clear, as if everything were pointing them in the right direction. At the edge of the forest he looked back and saw nothing but the windswept shore, debris littering the beach. Seaweed above the tide line, dry and cracked and fly buzzing.

When they were twenty yards up the path his father said, “I need you to run.” He said it in an almost unrecognizable register, and it was this that frightened Robert. More than the size of the man. More than his dead tooth. His father’s voice. It seemed conjured from the earth, something from the soil.

They ran for what seemed like half an hour but though Robert was exhausted he didn’t slow. Twigs snapped across his face. His father’s breathing was loud in his ear. He tripped, stood. Tripped again, and felt a sharp pain in his ankle. He made no sound. He told himself that was something he was not going to do. He stood and felt his father’s hands on him, felt himself being lifted off the ground. He held tight to his father around his rib cage and his father held tight to him, carrying him down the path. Robert shut his eyes. He pushed one of his ears to his father’s chest, and became overwhelmed by the fact of his father’s jostling body, cradling his own while careening through growth. He felt his father’s breath on the top of his head. He felt his father’s beating heart. He felt his father’s arms around him, iron and unbending. They were a tree themselves, moving through other trees.

T
hey were pushing the dinghy and had it halfway down to the water when the man came barreling into the sunlight. Robert saw his father reach for the fish club in the bottom of their dinghy, grab it, and turn. The man stopped briefly at the mouth of the trail, snorted, then resumed his charge. Arms outstretched, like wings.

What happened, happened fast. His father’s arm arced high, the man never slowed, the club came down with a sound that made Robert’s knees go out from under him. The man stepped back once, and then collapsed forward onto Robert’s father, bringing them both to the sand. His father exhaled what sounded like an animal whine, untangled himself, and then limply hit the man again with the club, this time on the back of the head. Then again, harder, with a blow that pushed his features into the sand. His father yelled something at the man, or at himself, Robert wasn’t sure. The man was motionless now, but his father, half-standing, hit him one more time. And then there was silence. The world had hushed. Robert, on his knees near the dinghy, watched a crab, watched a piece of seaweed, watched the rocks. He did not want to look up. In both hands he had fistfuls of sand. His father took him quickly in his arms and then the two of them pushed the dinghy into the water and began rowing toward
Pamier,
his father grunting with each stroke, Robert in the bow, as far away from his father as possible.

O
n the boat, they sat in the cockpit. The man, still on the beach, wasn’t moving. Someone his size, Robert imagined, would, in a few minutes, rise. But they watched for a few minutes, and nothing.

“Is he dead?” Robert finally asked. He’d searched for and found the fillet knife they’d left in the cockpit and was now holding it in his lap.

“I don’t know,” his father said. “I don’t think so.”

Robert wanted to say the man needed help, but was afraid.

“Give me your knife,” his father said.

Robert shook his head.

“I need to cut the stern-ties. Please.”

Robert handed his father the knife, and he leaned over the stern and began sawing the lines. Then he gave up. “Just untie them,” Robert said. His father looked at him and then at the cleats that held the lines, reached down and freed them. They dropped into the water with a tiny splash, and sunk.

On the beach Robert could see the bag of food they’d brought for the man, tipped over, its contents not six feet from him. The orange of the Dorito bag. The soda can catching the light. It looked like the man, carrying a bag of groceries, had suffered a heart attack and fallen. Not in the sand. Not on a desolate beach in the Broken Group on the outside of Vancouver Island. But in an asphalted parking lot, where someone would find him, tell whoever needed to be told, and be on their way.

His father stayed in the cockpit. He did not go below for the radio. He did not reach for his son. He sat perfectly still, watching the beach.

Finally he asked Robert if he was hungry. Robert shook his head. “Thirsty?” he said.

“No.”

Then he said, “Your mother loves you very much,” and Robert started crying.

T
he sun was high over the mast, and the dodger didn’t provide much shade. Robert’s father was sweating when he stood. He looked at the beach and then told Robert he was going.

“Where?”

“I’ll be right back,” he said. “I’ll be right where you can see me, the whole time. In sight of the boat. I’ll be back.”

“He needs help,” Robert said.

His father didn’t say anything.

“He needed our help.”

His father coughed and then asked him if he remembered how to use the radio. “I’m coming with you,” Robert said.

“No.”

His father climbed down over the lifeline and into the dinghy. Robert followed him and stood at the rail.

“Do you want the knife?” Robert said.

His father shook his head. “This is not your fault,” he said, and then pushed off the boat and began rowing to shore.

“Why can’t we just leave him?” Robert said. He knew his father, thirty feet away in the dinghy, could hear him, but there was no response.

F
rom
Pamier,
Robert watched his father beach the dinghy. He stepped onto the sand and, holding the fish club close to his leg, approached the fallen man. Once he stood at the man’s side he bent over, as if whispering to him. Then he straightened up. He turned to face the woods, turned again, and lobbed the club underhand toward the dinghy. When he saw Robert watching him he raised one hand in a wave. Robert waved back. Then he saw his father bend over the man, again, put his hands on his shirt, and pull. The man was enormous, and as he watched his father lose his grip, and try again, it seemed to Robert like the man had become lodged in the earth. Eventually he came loose. And Robert watched as his father began to drag the man up the beach, toward the tide line.

It was not easy going. He could hear his father strain with the load, grunts that reached across the water as he jerked and tugged. The man’s shirt ripped and his father fell backward. He stood, wiped the back of his pants, and then clasped the man’s hands in his and pulled him that way. The toes of the man’s boots carved parallel grooves in the wet sand. Behind both of them, the trees loomed motionless, a painting of trees.

Robert saw where his father was going, and wanted to tell him to stop. At the mouth of the woods, his father straightened up, paused for breath; then he bent over, found the man’s hands again, and disappeared into the growth. The man’s trailing legs jerked incremental progress until he too disappeared into the woods, and then there was silence. Free of the stern-ties,
Pamier
began to drift over her anchor. The wind picked up. Robert thought of his sister, at home, and then thought of the radio. He imagined a distress signal, issuing out from his boat and pulsing under the waves, washing up across the ocean. He imagined someone who looked like his father, but older, removing the receiver and answering. Lighthouses rhythmically sweeping the bay. He unsheathed the fillet knife and lay it across his lap. He listened in their gentle anchorage to the wavelets sucking against the hull, and waited. He promised himself he wouldn’t move until he saw what he wanted to see. Someone—perhaps many—would come. They had to.

a mugging

W
hat do we need to know about these people? Her name is Claire; his name is Charles. They are in their early forties, white, both architects—he works downtown, and she works from home, freelance. They’ve been married twelve years, and their time together has been punctuated by moments of happiness so engulfing that even the major interruptions—the birth of their son, her parents fourth-act divorce, the slow introduction of their own mortality—have been hurtled with the brio of inebriated three-legged racers. They are out walking now. They’ve just seen a movie neither of them cared for. They are looking forward to getting home. Can you see this particular train coming? Is there anything you or I can do to stop it? It’s ten-thirty now. I feel like there’s still time. But there they are, walking toward their car, not listening to me, or to anyone.

B
efore the attack, they will, the two of them, have been talking about her mother’s love life, her mother who is now dating after years of mistaking solitude for happiness, and their plans for the upcoming weekend. Afterward, they will drive home in a silence he will later interpret as quiet accusation and she will interpret as mutual reverence for the fact that they are now both back in the car, moving safely away, doors locked as if muggings had aftershocks like earthquakes.
Just a wallet with the credit cards and a cell phone, it was my husband’s wallet, and my purse,
she’ll say into the telephone after they’ve explained to the babysitter why they cannot pay her tonight and have turned on all the lights in the house.
Just,
her husband hisses. He’s overheard her from the bathroom where he’s leaning over the sink and letting pinkish drool drip from his mouth. He’d been hit hard. No words had been exchanged. Just hit. Bang. He didn’t even see the guy who hit him, couldn’t have said if he was enormous or small, he could’ve been the Chrysler Building for all he knew.

I
n the car, they’d talked about the emergency room—she’d wanted him to go, but he’d said
no
with such quiet force that she didn’t argue. It was dark where they’d parked, but soon they joined traffic, other people in their cars, and it was when they merged onto the freeway that he’d started crying. She’d pulled onto the shoulder and reached for him, but he’d pushed her away. Harder than he meant to. And then he’d said
just drive
.

H
ome. The sitter paid and gone. After checking on Sam, their son, happily watching a movie on his own, barely nodding as she asks if he had fun, pushing her away after a few seconds when she comes to hug him on the couch while Charles stays outside the room, she will call to cancel their cards and inquire about any recent charges, and the woman on the other end of the phone will say how sorry she is to hear about things like this. That it happens more than you’d think, meaning not just the losing but the violent taking (she will hear this, for some reason, as “violet talking” and ask the woman to repeat herself). The good news is that the card can be canceled and of course all the charges if there are any will be reversed. In fact, there is a recent charge, the woman says, I’m seeing that. It’ll be reversed, don’t worry. Where was it? The woman will tell her, it’s across town, and Claire, surprised at the calm with which all of this is being handled, will say thank you. Her husband is pacing the kitchen, opening and closing drawers, looking for who knows what, some crackers, she supposes, to go with the whiskey he’s poured himself, the alcohol that is making him wince as he slugs it back and sluices it around like mouthwash. His lip is swollen. His eyes are distant but burning, or drowning, she thinks drowning might be a more appropriate description of what his eyes look like, the same eyes she’s seen and loved every day for thirteen years, since even before they were married, these eyes that have only looked at her the way they are looking now twice in their life together, which is more like a not-looking, a scanning without seeing, as she tips his head back to get a closer look at his mouth in the light of the kitchen. She’s not a doctor, but she knows the hospital isn’t going to enter the picture tonight, that all he needs is the ice and alcohol he’s already allowing himself, and without thinking she pats his head to indicate she’s done with her inspection, a school nurse gesture, a this-gets-better-I-promise, your parents will be here to pick you up soon. As soon as she’s done it, there’s the hope he’ll interpret this as reassurance, but it’s dashed by a
goddamn it, Claire
. As if this were a mode of hers, this infantilizing. She reaches for the phone again, this time to call the police, but her husband tells her to put it down, tells her while refilling his glass and then filling one for her
what are we going to say, that some black kid hit me?
and she will say that it wasn’t a black kid, that she had seen him and it was a white kid, or a mostly white kid, and that when he had punched her husband she was so scared that she just held out her purse in front of her like it was something she suddenly didn’t want, something that stunk to her, something to get rid of, and she was grateful the guy had in fact taken it from her and run in the other direction, as if he were the one being chased and was scared himself.
So now the sympathy express stops for everyone,
her husband will say, and then go further and accuse her of not understanding what had happened to them, of really just not understanding, another liberal-leaning moment of not connecting the dots, that he could’ve been killed for chrissake, and she will tell him
but you weren’t, you weren’t, you weren’t
as he leaves the kitchen to double-check the doors and windows, whiskey in hand, walking briskly from one point of entry to the next, cupping his eyes against the glass to get a better sense of who might be standing outside, with his wife’s keys,
he knows our address, did you think of that? Our address
.

T
hat night, after she’s put Sam to bed, after she’s explained to him that
no, nothing happened to Dad, he just fell on some ice
and after Sam has accepted that explanation, and laughed at it even, because, at seven years old, slipping on ice is a probability—something he can understand though he has never actually
seen
his father slip—she will find her husband in their bed, remove her clothes, and join him. You understand, she will say, that you cannot get mad at me for this, and he will say of course. He doesn’t know what he’s thinking, of course he’s not mad at
her,
he’s just infuriated, and hurt, and these feelings have nowhere else to go. What do you need? she will ask him, and when he doesn’t respond, she will complete this thought, and say that she needs him, that is what something like this shows you, that is the important thing, the only good part. They will try at sex but give up almost immediately. She is tender with him; he is lethargic with her. Their normal suture, gone. His eyes, still gone. They are, both of them, still walking back to their car in their minds.

I
n bed, later, with Charles miraculously asleep, on his back and snoring into the void, Claire will hear her son across the hall and realize she’s been waiting for this, the moment of his waking, and has, in some way mysterious to her, willed it. Recently he has become afraid of everything—the way the wind ruffles the curtains, what the night does to the color of a picture hanging on his wall, loud cars and sirens—and when he is afraid he comes to her. She will hear the instant his eyes snap open, will hear him sit up in bed, whimper softly, and swing his legs to the floor. She knows, as he walks the distance between them, that in one hand he’s carrying his pillow and with the other is dragging his blanket behind him like, Lord help her, this is how she thinks of it, like a bridal train, halfheartedly making his way to a sleepy ceremony. They’ve set up a rule: if he wakes he can come into their room to sleep for the rest of the night, but he cannot sleep in the bed with them; he can bring his blanket and he can sleep on the floor, next to her, so he will know she’s right there, always. But boundaries need to be respected, even by seven-year-olds, perhaps
especially
by seven-year-olds, perhaps especially by
her
seven-year-old, who seems capable of accepting every emotion she can imagine, every emotion she pushes in his direction, without filling up. He is a planet-eater. With the exception of tonight, never once has he flinched from an embrace. Never once has he told her to leave him alone. It is a rule, tonight, she’ll consider breaking.

He will wordlessly put his pillow on the floor, wordlessly spread his blanket and lie down. She will reach for him, take his hand, and say
dreams?
He will squeeze her hand and she will feel an immense gratitude and he will say
yeah
and then take his hand from hers and return it below his blanket.

“J
esus
Christ,
” her friend Jill will say the next morning. “Did you call the police?”

“Charles didn’t want to,” Claire will say. She is in the bathroom, on the phone. Phone cord stretching from the kitchen.

“
I
would’ve called the police.”

“He was
crying,
Jill.”

H
er husband will take the day off from work. The moment to talk about what happened to them, between them, is long past. His mouth is tender; in the mirror it looks sore, like the guy, whoever it was, had taken a fistful of cotton and jammed it in his lip and left it there. To his surprise he is pleased to see his face mildly disfigured, it makes him look not himself, as if a harder face had surfaced in order to give proper shape to the way he is feeling. His gums throb, pulse outward from an epicenter he locates in the middle of his palate. The pain, the mild pain, is radiant, and moves away from him like ripple-waves, bouncing off the bathroom walls, coming back to him never fully absorbed. He’ll spend the morning driving around from hardware store to hardware store, looking for dead bolts, looking for window locks, talking to some kid in an orange apron about home security systems. He’ll return with a sack full of metal, and spread it on the dining room table and stare at the pile, hands on his hips, a picture, to Claire, who is watching him from the kitchen, of someone reading fortune bones. She will walk behind him as he’s sorting the pile, drape her arms around him and feel, at his side, under his lightweight jacket, something hard.

“Hunting knife,” he’ll say.

“You’re wearing it around?” she’ll say.

“I just bought it,” he’ll say.

“Don’t you think that’s a little . . .”

“
What?
” he’ll hiss.

She’ll be taken aback. She’ll step away from her husband, and let him come to her. When he doesn’t, she’ll say, “What are you going to do? Get in a knife fight?”

“Did
you
get punched in the face?”

“He took my purse, remember. I was there too.”

“I know you were there.”

“What’s next, a gun? Do we want that in our house? Are you going to let all of this into our house?”

“I’m protecting our family, Claire. It’s pretty simple. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to install some locks.”

T
he house, locked, will feel different than before. The creaks louder, the plumbing worse. Every quirk an agitation. Four days after the attack, Saturday night, her husband will spend an entire evening driving around the neighborhood, flashing high beams into unlit corners. He’ll walk back into the house and go straight upstairs. He’ll inspect his lip for half an hour, just looking at himself in the mirror, while Claire reads Sam to bed. This, she’ll remind him, is a night when they should be eating together. He’ll say he had work to do, and she will let it slide. Two mornings later, while Charles is at his office, one of the newly installed locks will fall off the door and hit the ground with a sound like a table collapsing. She’ll inspect the divot left in the wood floor by the falling lock, unsurprised.

“What’d you do?” he’ll say when she reaches him at work to tell him about the lock.

“I didn’t do anything, it just fell off.”

“You did
something
.”

W
hile he’s at work, she’ll hire someone to switch out the locks. That night, in the kitchen, she’ll tell her husband
something’s wrong here
and he’ll say
nothing’s wrong here
and she’ll say
you’re not acting like yourself
and he’ll say
maybe I don’t like myself
and she’ll tell him
these things happen
and
maybe he needs to talk to someone about it
and he’ll say
well, isn’t that just like you to think that
and that she has no idea what he’s going through and she’ll say
what on earth are you going through
and they’ll be interrupted by their son, who has heard them from his bedroom, and who is sending wooden blocks down the stairs to get them to stop arguing.

S
he’ll reach for him in bed, and he’ll grab her hand and take a shot at flinging it across the room.
Don’t you ever do that again
she’ll say, and he’ll say
I’m sorry, I’m sorry.

O
n Friday, their son will come home from school, dropped off in front of their house by the bus, by the driver who, most days, is overly friendly, but today will drive away as soon as the doors close behind Sam, as if, she thinks, he’s got more important things to do today than make sure there’s someone around to welcome each weather-bundled child safely inside. She’ll meet him at the door, take his backpack and half-eaten lunch, ask him about Ms. Sabotka, and listen as he lists in chronological order everything he did today, first snack time, then recess, then drawing, then cursive, then choosing the music everyone in the class would listen to, then computers. She’ll ask him then if he still wants to go over to Patrick’s house for a sleepover, Patrick, the son of her friend Jill, who is as loud as Sam is soft, the Patrick who has stolen his toys and was then made by Jill to sheepishly return them, the Patrick forgiven instantaneously by her son, as if his toys meant so much less to him than Patrick himself, since it was Patrick, she was told, who wrestled with an older boy who was taking Sam’s money at school.
Of course, Mom
he’ll say, and she’ll wonder, on the car ride over, if she was right or wrong in detecting a note of irritation in his voice, in that word,
Mom
.