Before. Before he dropped the air speed. Before he lowered the wing flaps.
Take his dreams and put them on the table. He’d sat there, listening — hearing. The propeller stopped spinning. His throat opened, his mouth had been dry.
They hadn’t been able to get the living ones out until morning. A tourniquet can only do so much. So some of them died. Exsanguination.
* * *
Pilgrim made breakfast: papaya and toast, a pot of tea. ‘There are eggs,’ she said. But after some discussion — boiled, poached? — neither of them wanted one. She was wearing an old kikoi of his, she must have found it in the cupboard. It hid her breasts and hips, but this only accentuated the slim length of her arms, her lovely ankles.
‘I need to know,’ she said. ‘About the ghosts.’
Had he told her about them? He didn’t recall. He must have been bat-faced to blather on like that. He could deny it, say it must have been the booze talking, he didn’t know any ghosts.
‘Need?’ He was still trying to decide what he should tell her. ‘Why do you need to know?’
‘The boy,’ she said.
Harry noticed the little knot of bone where her wrist joined her hand.
‘The boy in the white shirt,’ she continued. ‘Who is he?’
Harry considered denial. What boy? ‘Ah,’ he said to give himself another fraction of time. He kept thinking: if I’d finished the beer, if I’d finished the beer. But I didn’t. Because of the boy. So he said what was obvious, ‘The boy is a ghost.’
Pilgrim laughed, an odd, contorted little laugh.
Now Harry laughed. And he caught her up in his true laugh, so that laughter flowed out of her.
‘A ghost?’
‘Yes, a ghost.’
‘This is a ghost story?’
Later, after they’d eaten, he told her.
‘It’s a long time ago now. They were in the road, walking home. They’d lived near me, a young couple. One block over. I used to see them when I drove home from the club at night. For a long time I thought they were just out walking. One night, I stopped to have a chat. I realized too late the woman was crying. They’ve had a row, I thought.
‘But the woman said to me, “We can’t find our dog.”
‘The man put his arm around her shoulder, “He’s a little terrier, a black shaggy thing, have you seen him?”
‘I said I was sorry, but no, I hadn’t. I’d keep a lookout.’
Harry pulled the quart bottle of Konyagi out of his pocket and took a grateful swig. He offered it to Pilgrim, and she took a taste.
‘Rough.’
‘Not after twenty-five years.’
She took another sip. ‘The couple who were lost in the caves? Are you talking about them? I thought you said they were before your time.’
‘They were. Long before.’ Harry let the fact sit by itself for a moment. He’d gone over it many times, he’d checked the dates, and he was dead certain.
‘The next day I drove round to their house to see if they’d had any luck and found the dog. But the house was all closed up. Had been for years. For a few days I drove home another way. And I forgot about them. The benefit of booze. Then I got home one night and found her sitting on my bed — the woman, very pretty, dark hair like you.
‘“They want to know what you’re going to do,” she said.
‘“Who?” I said. But I knew. Of course I did.
‘She repeated: “What are you going to do?”
‘I told her to get out. Never before, never since told a woman to get out of my bedroom.’
‘Did you see her again?’ Pilgrim asked.
Harry shook his head. ‘Not her. Others.’
‘And you’re sure?’
‘Sure? That she existed? Do ghosts exist?’ He smiled. ‘Did I make her up? Was she a projection of my poor, beleaguered conscience? Of the booze? I’ve thought about all that. How can I know — how can I really be sure?’
‘Did you do anything?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘She asked you, “What are you going to do?” Have you done anything?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Just drink.’
Pilgrim was leaning forward now. She wasn’t smiling, but her face had a kind of light. ‘Anything beautiful?’ she asked. ‘Have you done anything beautiful?’
At first, he didn’t understand what the hell she was on about.
GLORIA
At dawn she pilots the little boat out into the bay. Something not many people know about Gloria: she grew up on the water. Lake Michigan. So she can handle boats. People think she’s just a fat woman. But she is a woman of great physical strength and grace, and a very able swimmer. Thirty-six years ago she was Michigan’s junior state champion in breaststroke. But her real love had been butterfly: arcing up out of the water like a manta ray, the power cording like electricity through her body to her feet, and how she flew and plunged, the high arch of her strong back.
But then Milton. Soft words, such soft words, always watching from the bleachers, watching her in her swimsuit and bathing cap. Revealed. Thighs, breasts, the shape of her buttocks. She might as well have been naked. He was older and that made her feel oh so special. Don’t worry, little Mary, I’ll pull out. Whatever that meant she hadn’t a clue. I want to be your first, Mary, little Mary, my Mary, does that feel good, Mary, I bet that feels good, god, your tasty little cherry. Technically, his impregnation of her was statutory rape. And that made the violation about age, him being forty-two and her being sixteen, and not about the bruises. He’d pinched her, hard, dozens of times, as if he was plucking a turkey, before fucking her, rudely, quickly. Then rolling over and falling asleep. What a turd blossom.
Mary never could lose the pregnancy weight. The muscle turned to fat. Her body made new fat like a morphing sci-fi creature. The upside was Milton stopped wanting to fuck her. The upside was James in her arms, on her breast, sucking fiercely. The downside was being seventeen, a high school dropout. It didn’t matter how smart she was. It sure as hell didn’t matter that she could swim.
The sea is still as a mirror and this makes the sound of the outboard loud. People might peer toward the noise, might see her. But then they’d have to be looking hard and with binoculars: she is wearing a kanga over her head and another over her shoulders. From a distance it would be difficult to tell she’s even white. Let alone a woman. Let alone: Mama Gloria.
She sees the first buoy at the harbor entrance. The fishermen are there, dynamiting the last of the coral reefs. A lot of fishermen these days are missing an arm; they always say, Oh, a big papa got them. Yeah, right. A big shark with a fuse on the end that goes boom.
Out past the second buoy, the water gets choppier and the little boat thumps against the waves. Gloria wonders why she doesn’t come out here more often, for how it makes her feeclass="underline" like a strong, competent woman. Not a fat old hag. She bears north now, heading for a narrow gap in the mangroves. The tide’s still high enough to cut through this way.
Closer in to the mangroves the water stills again. So still she could dimple it with her breath. She can see straight down, five or six feet, to the silty bottom and mangrove shoots and sea-grass. She imagines the Amazon must be like this: wild green embracing the water, a low horizon, the feeling of being hidden inside. Lake Michigan was deep and murky and polluted; she could never see what was down below or how far down.