The Art of Floating (11 page)

Richard stepped out the front door. Toad followed, and as he neared the vehicle, the rookie leapt out of the car. The rookie's eyes skated from Toad to Sia and back again. So this was the mystery man and the woman who'd found him. Sia imagined him at the bar, swilling back a beer and regaling his buddies with the Paul Bunyan version of the story.

“See,” Jillian whispered in Sia's ear, “the rookie's thinking alien, too.”

“Jilly, hush up,” Sia said.

As Richard closed the car door behind Toad, Gumper whined and sat down on Sia's feet. It was the first time he'd sat there since Toad's arrival. He looked up at her and pushed on her hip with his head.

“Sorry, bud,” she said, rubbing his ears, “we have to let him go. He's not ours to keep.”

•  •  •

Later, Sia wondered what was theirs to keep.

Health?

Nope.

Money?

Nope.

Land?

Not really.

When she married Jackson, she thought for sure he was hers to keep. That was what marriage was, right? For keeps. She had stood on the beach outside their house and told the minister, “Yes, yes, I take this man as my husband.” She'd wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him longer than was appropriate. She'd kissed until M had tapped her on the shoulder and suggested they move it to the backseat of Jackson's Jeep. Then she'd laughed. And Jackson had laughed. And they'd kissed one more time.

After they married, she was surprised that there was still so much to discover about him. She thought she knew it all, but marriage proved to be an archaeological dig into the deepest caverns of her husband's psyche, and back in the dark, moist caves, she discovered all kinds of things she'd never expected—secrets and desires that over the years had gotten buried under lodes of stone and lichen. When he disappeared, the two of them were just beginning to uncover each other's pasts with cuspate picks and axes. She wondered about the raw spots, the jagged edges, and the tender crevices. Jackson had been determined and almost unbearably adept at uncovering her person, digging into the depths, pulling from her honesty she wasn't sure she had in her. He was organized and meaningful in his approach, while she came to his innards as she came to most things, by accident, by losing things and finding others.

•  •  •

To get to the police station, the Dogcatcher hurried along the park that skirted the Merrimack River. When she hit the boardwalk, she saw the gaggle of beach-walking women heading toward her, their hands clenched into white fists, their slender hips popping out left and right, left and right. Their arms?

Pump-pump-pump. Pump-pump-pump. I think I can. I think I can. Pump-pump-pump. I know I can. I know I can. Pump-pump-pump.

When they saw the Dogcatcher, the women immediately began to execute their well-practiced avoidance maneuver. Like a swarm of bees, they shifted to the opposite side of the boardwalk, tightened their ranks, and lowered their heads.

As the space between them closed, the Dogcatcher hummed the Jet song from
West Side Story
. Then she lowered her head, pumped her arms, popped her scrawny hips left and right, left and right, and cruised on past them.

The hoopla surrounding the publication of Sia's second novel was expected, but the hoopla surrounding the publication of
Bolt
had been a shock.

“Who is she?” book reviewers had asked. “Where's she been?”

Sia hadn't written much short stuff, and any that she had written had gone unnoticed.

“This is what we wait for,” one reviewer said. “A crack of lightning from the heavens.”

The night before Jackson's disappearance, six people in town dreamed of him. Three just a few hours after falling off to sleep and three just before waking.

Mimi Laslow, whose bedroom window overlooked the sea, dreamed that Jackson flew away. He climbed to the top of a mountain, spread an impressive pair of wings, and soared. “Like an eagle's wings,” she told her husband the next morning before the dream disintegrated. Mimi couldn't remember where Jackson was going or why, though she was sure she'd known in her sleep. “He didn't soar aimlessly,” she told Joe, “but knew exactly where he was going, like a migrating goose with his compass set for south.” But when Mimi looked up for a reaction or a response from her husband, she realized he hadn't heard a word. They'd been married many years and it had been almost as many since he'd stopped listening to her dreams. “So then,” she continued, “I stripped naked at the local market, shopped for milk and eggs, and stood in line with my great white rump leaning against the candy display.” But even that didn't pull Joe's attention from the sports page. By noon Mimi had forgotten the dream altogether.

Ted Stimson had a similar dream, but in his, Jackson's wings were bloodred and the mountaintop was the roof of a very tall building. It was a man's dream. A hard dream with edges and sharp points. Unfortunately Ted didn't remember a thing about it the next morning, but even if he had, he wouldn't have told a soul.

Three others (Lily Keith, Sandra Keold, and Mason Vireo) dreamed that Jackson simply faded away like twilight. Each was looking at him—the real flesh-and-bone Jackson—in a store or the library or the boatyard, watching him tip his baseball cap back on his head with one index finger the way he did whenever he stopped to talk to somebody. One minute he was laughing and chatting, and the next he was nothing more than a shadow. By the time each moved on to a different dream, there was nothing left of him.

Hannah Willow, the sixth person to dream about Jackson, was a short, blond kid . . . skinny as a nail . . . who was blind in her left eye and from birth had dragged her right foot behind her like a sack of bricks. The year before Jackson disappeared, she'd attended his “Back to Nature” summer camp and had become one of his favorites, though he'd fought hard not to show it. “She moves like a broken crab,” Jackson told Sia, “but, man, that girl can cast a line.”

That night, the one before Jackson was never seen again, Hannah dreamed that he knocked on the door of her house. It was late in the dream, after midnight, and Hannah's parents and her sisters were asleep. Hannah wasn't sure why her dog, Henry, didn't bark like he always did when someone knocked at the door or why no one else got up to answer it. When she opened the door, she saw Jackson standing there in his swimsuit with a small backpack in his hand.

“Hi, Hannah-banana,” he said, the way he always did during camp or when he and Sia ran into her and her mom at the grocery store.

“Hi, Jack,” she said. “What are you doing here?”

“I came to say good-bye. I'm going away.”

“With Sia?”

“No. By myself.”

“How come?”

“Just gotta go. Got the calling.”

“Where are you going?”

“Not sure about that yet.”

“When are you coming back?”

“I'm not, Hannah-banana. I just needed to say good-bye.”

“Oh,” Hannah said. Behind Jackson, the moon was a slobbery orange . . . dreadfully illuminating.

“What about camp this year?” she asked.

“Don't you worry about that now,” Jackson said.

“What about Sia?”

Jackson didn't answer.

“Okay,” Hannah said.

“I want you to take care of yourself,” Jackson said.

“I want you to take care of yourself, too,” she said.

Before Jackson disappeared the way people do in dreams, without walking or running, he reached out and took Hannah's hand. It was at least twice as big as hers and very rough. Hannah thought it felt like the bottom side of her father's boat. Then he was gone. A few minutes later Hannah heard a splash.

The next morning while she shoveled Cocoa Puffs into her mouth, Hannah told her mom about the dream.

“You must be worried about summer camp,” her mother said.

“I don't feel worried,” Hannah said.

“Well, sometimes we don't know we're worried, so we dream to work things out.”

Hannah looked at her mom with the spoon jutting out of her mouth. “I don't think so, Mom. I know when I'm worried.”

And then Hannah started thinking about the Red Sox game she was heading to later that day with her dad and her best friend, Violet Coo. Against the Yankees.

•  •  •

The day after the game, when her mom told her about Jackson's disappearance, Hannah cried for nearly an hour.

“I dreamed it, Mom,” she said. “I dreamed that he disappeared.”

Her mom nodded and pulled her close.

Piping Plover (
Charadrius melodus
)

Description:
a small sand-colored shorebird approx. the size of a sparrow; nests and feeds along coastal sand and gravel beaches in North America; breeding adult has yellow-orange legs, a black band across the forehead from eye to eye, and a black ring around the neck; well camouflaged

History:
protected by the Endangered Species Act since 1986

Movement:
runs in short starts and stops (like Jilly)

Call:
mournful bell-like whistles that you often hear before you see the bird; thus its name,
piping
plover

Feeding Habits:
generally forages for food around the high-tide wrack zone and along the water's edge; mainly eats insects, marine worms, and crustaceans

Nesting Habits:
nests directly on the sand, leaving them and their eggs exposed to predators (skunks, foxes, Joe Laslow, other birds)

“
Nineteen inches,” Jackson said.

“Already?”

“That's what the weatherman's reporting.”

Another garbage can—freed of its moorings—bashed into the boulders in the front yard, then clattered on down the street. The wind whistle-screamed through the slit under the back door. Icy crystals struck at the windowpanes.

“How much more is coming?” Sia asked.

“At least another eight inches, maybe twelve.”

“Sweet,” Sia said, tucking the afghan under her feet. “Toss another log on that fire.”

“And then?”

“And then come on over here.”

“Is there room?”

Sia pushed Gumper off her lap. He huffed his way to the far end of the couch. “I'll make room,” she said.

Jackson stoked the fire, then crawled under the afghan with Sia. “I should shovel,” he said.

“Too windy.” Sia kissed Jack's neck.

“You should shovel.”

“Too comfy.” She kissed his ear.

“
He
should shovel,” Jack said, pushing on Gumper's posterior with his foot.

“Too lazy.” Sia wrapped her arms around Jack.

“Someone should shovel.”

“Tomorrow.” She nuzzled his cheek.

“I'm pretty sure this is not leading to a well-shoveled driveway.”

Sia sighed against Jack's chest. “Probably not.”

Th
e Dogcatcher leapt out from behind a mailbox. “Aha!” she yelped.

Sia jumped.

“There you are!” the Dogcatcher said.

Sia froze. “Yes,” she said, “here I am. You're looking for me?” She fought the urge to run. Though she wouldn't have thought it possible, the Dogcatcher was now scrawnier and more hideous than the first time she'd seen her close-up four years before. Bent in places most people don't bend, with bumps of hard growth sprouting from her body in a random higgledy-piggledy fashion, she was now little more than a bone. An arthritic finger.

“I am.” The Dogcatcher raised her arm over her head and shook a bunch of lost-dog flyers at Sia.

“What are those?”

“Lost souls,” the Dogcatcher said, lowering her arm. Her voice was quiet and sad. Sia felt it deep in her middle. She was surprised that she had room for more with Toad occupying so much space.

Acutely aware of the woman's appearance, Sia was suddenly and equally aware of her own image in the plate-glass window of the shoe store behind the Dogcatcher.

“You came to see me four years ago,” Sia said. “Right? When I found Gumper? That was you, wasn't it?”

“Yes.”

“And now you're telling me that you're looking for me again. I get the feeling you want something, but I'm not sure what.”

“First things first,” said the Dogcatcher.

“Okaaaaay,” Sia said.

“How is the dog?”

“The dog?” Afraid the Dogcatcher was back to reclaim Gumper for herself or for the original owners, she jigged about in her head for a solution.

Run?

Fabricate?

Fight?

“Yes, the one you hung the sign for four years ago. Gumper, right?”

“Oh, that dog.” Sia thought of Jackson falling out of his chair laughing when she'd shown him the dog-paw business card.

“Well?”

“Why do you need to know about this dog? Was he yours? Do you have some stake in him? Do you want to take him back where he came from? Do you know where he came from?”

•  •  •

As Sia fired questions at the Dogcatcher, townspeople began to collect around them. They pressed in, gawked, and nudged so close that she suddenly felt like a giraffe in the zoo. Spotted. Elongated. Bandy-legged.

“Giraffe,” Sia was sure she'd heard them whisper. “Giraffe.” She looked at her reflection in the window. Same old her.

The Dogcatcher paid no attention to the growing crowd. She tucked her face close to Sia's. “I need to know so I can help you,” she said. She wrinkled her nose and sniffed.

“Help me with what?” Sia said.

“With lost things,” the Dogcatcher said.

“Oh.” Sia was confused and curious. “What do you mean?”

“Do you or do you not have lost things?”

Sia looked around her. She was getting that same feeling she got on the beach when Toad looked beyond her, as if there were something going on she couldn't see. She caught Mrs. Wysong's eye, thought momentarily about pigeon pose, and then looked back at the Dogcatcher.

“You're confusing me,” she said. “And you're being very cryptic.”

The Dogcatcher eased away from Sia. “It's okay. I can help.”

•  •  •

As they spoke, Gumper lay on the cool tile of Sia's back patio, snoozing through the late-morning hours. Every few minutes he puffed out a small sigh and rolled from one side to the other.

•  •  •

When she couldn't take any more, Sia turned to the crowd. “What? What? What?” she said. “What do you all want?”

Joe Laslow stepped forward. “Is it true, Sia?”

“Is what true?”

“You found a man?”

The crowd pressed in. No use lying to them.

“Yes, Joe, I did.”

“On the beach?”

“Yep.”

“Was he really wearing a suit?”

“Mmm-hhhmmm.”

“And a strange look?”

“Yes,” Mrs. Spindle said, “a look of nothing is what we heard.”

Sia nodded. “Yes, that's true.”

“What does a look of nothing look like?” Mrs. Spindle asked.

“Just what it implies, Mrs. Spindle,” Sia said.

“Can you show us?” Mrs. Wysong asked.

Sia rolled her eyes. “Oh, for God's sake, no, I can't show you.”

“Well, then, are you sure it wasn't a look of longing?” Mrs. Spindle asked. She had lost her husband to a stroke a few months earlier, his arteries clogged so thick after fifty years of his high school sweetheart's extra-special bacon-and-egg breakfasts that they ran thick as tow ropes through his body. Ever since, Mrs. Spindle saw longing wherever she looked. On the face of the parrotfish in the pet store window. In the coffee grounds she tossed at the base of her tomato plants in her garden each morning. In the hitch of the FedEx deliveryman's step. She even saw longing in the angle of the midmorning sun.

“No, Mrs. Spindle,” Sia said, softening a little, “it wasn't longing. Though for you, I wish it were.”

“Not confusion, Odyssia?” Mr. Spencer asked. At eighty-eight, he was a little confused himself. Deaf, too. He was leaning on the mailbox.

Sia leaned close to his good ear and raised her voice. “No, Mr. Spencer, not confusion.”

“Fear, maybe?” Sandy the bagger from the local grocery asked hopefully. Her voice quivered as she spoke, reminding everyone that she was frightened of much more than her own shadow, a list that included childish fears like spiders, mice, and the dark, but also unlikely fears like lawn mowers, men with mustaches, and any bird bigger than a hummingbird. Like most people, she felt better if others shared her neuroses.

“It was what it was,” Sia said. “There's no use trying to make it more romantic or interesting. It was, and is, a look of nothing. Now go away.” She caught a flash of her reflection in the window as she turned away.

Sia turned back to the Dogcatcher. “Let's start again. You want to know about Gumper.”

“Yes.”

“The dog? My dog? The one I've had for the last four years?”

“Yes.”

“You know I kept him?”

“Of course. Yes, yes. Gumper, Gumper, Gumper.”

“You do?”

“Of course, I see you,” the Dogcatcher said and clapped her hands together. She looked happy, and—for a moment—not quite as hideous.

“This is a good thing?” Sia asked. She was incredulous. “I thought you wanted to take Gumper from me.”

“Oh, no. That dog came from a wretched place from wretched people.”

“How do you know that?”

The Dogcatcher held up the signs. “I did research,” she said. “His family was very bad. I was hoping you'd keep him.”

“Why didn't you say that four years ago?” Sia asked.

“It's not my place to change things. I just know about them and keep an eye on them. That's my job.”

“Your job?” Sia said. “This is a job?”

“Yes,” the Dogcatcher said.

Sia crossed the street, walked to a bench in the town center, and sat down. The crowd grudgingly dispersed when she broke ranks. The Dogcatcher followed her, and when she sat on the bench, her legs didn't reach the ground. She swung them back and forth like an anxious child.

“Well,” Sia said, “you should have told me. All this time I thought you wanted to steal Gumper away and take him home to his family.”

“Oh, no. Not at all. You are his family. You and Gumper-Man. Though he's not with you anymore.”

“Gumper-Man?”

“Yes, the man who disappeared.”

“You know about that, too?” Sia looked hard at the Dogcatcher.

“Of course. Everyone knows about that.”

“You also said you know I have lost things?”

“That's not hard to see,” the Dogcatcher said. “Anyone who looks at you can see that.”

“They can?”

“Well, we've settled this,” the Dogcatcher said. She stood. “I can file Gumper away.”

“You said before that you could help me.”

“Yes, yes, I did.” The Dogcatcher was growing agitated again. She scratched at her leg. “But not now.”
Scritchedy-scratch. Scritchedy-scratch.

“Then when?” Sia asked.

“Soon,” the Dogcatcher said. And as quickly as she'd appeared in Sia's path, she was gone. Pumping her arms like the fast-walkers.

•  •  •

By the end of the day, everyone knew that Mrs. Windwill had been sleeping when Toad appeared on the shore.
Whisper, whisper
—that's how it started: “Mrs. Windwill didn't see . . .”—at first like an (almost) imperceptible wave.

Whisper.

Then?

The flash flood.

“For the second time . . .” they said—as if the two times she'd missed important, life-changing events suddenly outweighed all the lives she'd saved, all the burglars she'd caught, all the human decencies and indecencies she'd witnessed and mourned and shared. But it was the weight of the two events that she missed that caused the loyalty of the masses to falter. Man disappears; man appears. Folks chattered about it over pancakes and during the warm-up exercises at aerobics class; tussled with it at the town council meeting; prayed about it during services.

“Unforgivable,” they said.

But the truth? The hard truth? Mrs. Windwill was getting old. She had to face it. They had to face it. She was, well . . . good question . . . exactly how old was Mrs. Windwill? Seventy? Seventy-five? Eighty? When she'd started this thing, this seeing thing, she was young and saucy. Eyes like an owl's. Now? Today? She was old. Old. With thick glasses and a weepy eye.

On top of that (and this was the hardest thing to accept) she was only human.