Noah thought, He’s pleading. Maybe not to me, but he is.
“It’s all the same, though, like I said, because when we did come off the rocks, all I wanted to do was get off that goddamn boat. It was the only thing left to do.”
Noah looked up at him. “So that’s when you knew she was going down.”
“There wasn’t much doubt about it. I mean, despite the fact that we couldn’t see a thing, you could tell she was wallowing.” He paused. “Whenever I imagine what she must have looked like from God’s view, all I can see is the dying light.”
“How fast did it happen?”
“Can’t say for sure, but between the four of us we couldn’t have gotten the lifeboat launched in any less than fifteen or twenty minutes, and considering how far from the rocks she ended up, it was probably a little longer than that.”
“Not enough time for any of the other ships to get there?”
“No way.”
“Or the Coast Guard?”
“What were they going to do even if they’d been able to get there? Searching for us on a night like that would’ve been like looking for a cotton ball in a cloud. They never would have found us.”
“And the rest of the crew?” Noah asked, almost in a whisper.
“Don’t know what happened,” Olaf said and put his head down.
They sat in silence for a while before Noah slid off the counter and went back to the armchair. “You look tired,” he said.
“I’m always tired.”
“I’m tired, too,” he said, looking at his watch to find that it was only six o’clock. “Why don’t you get some sleep?”
“I think I will,” Olaf said. “Give me a hand, would you?”
Noah skirted around the coffee table and took his father by the elbow. His arm was thin and soft. Noah helped him around the table.
“Gotta hit the head,” Olaf said.
“Me, too.”
“You know, I never thought much about it, but the worst part of the whole goddamn night came after we got the lifeboat in the water.”
They walked to the door and stood in the dusky light coming off the kitchen, pushing their feet into a pile of unlaced boots by the door.
“That’s the real story,” Olaf said.
“Why don’t you save that part for another time, huh?”
“It was a hell of a thing, you know? A hell of a thing.”
“I’ve no doubt about that,” Noah said as he pushed the door open. The air was biting, and no sooner did Noah step outside than his body drew taut and a shiver rippled up his back and through his shoulders.
They walked to the edge of the glow from the house and stood next to each other beside a tree, their shoulders almost touching.
“Already stars in the west,” Olaf said, pointing through the trees. “It’s going to clear up.”
“Hopefully warm up, too.”
“What, it doesn’t get cold in Boston?”
“Of course it does, it’s just that we usually hold off on the snow until winter.”
“Ah, hell, that wasn’t snow.”
“It looked like snow to me. It got me thinking about your dog.” Noah could picture Vikar somewhere in the middle of the woods, wet and bloody-muzzled, devouring a freshly slain rabbit.
“Don’t worry about him. He’s been roaming these woods for a long time now,” Olaf said as he climbed the three rickety wooden steps back into the house. Noah held him steady by the elbow.
When he opened the door, Noah could feel the warm air surge out of the house. The blustery evening had cleared Noah’s head — had invigorated him — and when he stepped back into the house, he thought it smelled like boiling rutabaga. It was a smell that reminded him of his mother and the dreaded Friday-night fish boils of his childhood. He was instantly sapped again.
He kicked off the boots and sat back down on the couch while Olaf filled a glass jar with water from the pitcher. He drank it, then filled it again, took two chalky tablets from a canister on the counter, and dropped them into the jar. Finally he dug into his mouth and pulled his teeth out and dropped them in the jar.
“What?” Noah said. “Since when do you have dentures?”
“Six years ago. I hate the goddamn things,” Olaf said, picking up the jar and holding it to the light. His lips seemed baggier without his teeth, and it made him look even older.
Noah ran his tongue across the front of his own teeth. “I didn’t know you had them.”
“I guess you wouldn’t.”
“I guess not.”
Noah rolled the chart back up and returned it to the shelf. Standing at the window, he thought, That’s it then. That’s the dead come back to life. “I’ll have some dreams tonight,” he said.
Olaf set his teeth on the counter. “You’re lucky enough to still dream, huh?”
SIX
What a sight the old man made. On one end of the couch his bushy-rimmed head rested on a pillow. A collage of quilts covered him, leaving only his clownish feet — snug in thick wool socks — dangling over the other end of the sofa. His arms were folded over his chest, the sleeves of his union suit coming apart at the cuffs. He might have looked like this in a coffin, Noah thought as he walked past, slid on a pair of boots, and stepped outside.
A ribbon of beguiling fog curled up the trail from the lake, and he followed it down. Pockets of complete darkness still haunted the woods on either side of the path, heavy, wet, and eerie in a polka-dotted dawn. He could see the lightness above the lake and the still-black water exhaling mist. He thought again of Natalie’s arriving today.
When he came to the beach he walked to the edge of the water and kicked at a clump of limp grass. He wore only a sweatshirt and his boxers, and the cold air gripped his legs. He flexed his body to stave off the chill. All around the rim of the lake the woods hoarded a darkness that didn’t seem to make sense — coming, as he had, down the faintly lit path — but when he turned around to look back at the house, it too was gone in the darkness.
Across the lake, above the rolling treetops, the sky was turning a muted red that faded upward, seamlessly, through a hundred shades of pink and back to black. He stepped onto the dock, the planks and pilings creaking under his weight. The boat sat in the water, tied to the dock by two expert knots that appeared ready to hold the old thing there forever. Noah tiptoed into the boat and sat on the splintered thwart, watching the ripples roll out on the otherwise placid lake. Natalie will love this place, he thought. He could picture her on a warm summer afternoon, sitting on the beach with a magazine and sun hat under the shade of an umbrella. She would squint at him and smile and lick her thumb before turning the page. At lunch she would tell him peaches were out, blueberries in, according to the latest health craze she’d just finished reading about. He’d make himself a summer-sausage sandwich and look at the kids, two of them — twins, he’d decided — three years old and sitting in the clearing in the yard, on a picnic blanket in the sun. Fair-skinned and straight-haired, they picked at a caterpillar. He’d touch Nat on her knee and bowl into the sunlight, arms wide, to scoop them up. The kids would jump up and scream happiness and stutter-step in circles until he captured them. Nat, clearing the paper plates, would watch them, shielding her eyes from the sun with her hand.
A fish rolled lazily out of the water beside the boat, a big fish, and Noah’s reverie was lost. She’s sleeping, he thought, looking at his wrist for the watch not there. She’ll be on her way soon. In that instant he realized — almost as if he’d always been aware of this fact — that his father’s story mattered only if Noah could someday tell it himself, to a son or daughter, to another Torr who could keep it alive — here, on a blustery November night — for a third generation. He stood up, thankful for Nat’s fortitude, and started back toward the house.