The Bully of Order (12 page)

“Are you all right?”

“You hit my eye.”

“Is it bleeding?”

“Get away from him,” his sister said.

I did as I was told. She was pretty and neat, like a toy was neat, even if she did sort of look like her brother. “Sorry,” I said.

“C'mon,” Zeb said. “Leave em here. Let's go.” Then he ran off without waiting for me.

The girl helped her brother to his feet. He wouldn't uncover his eye for her to see it. I'd hurt him and didn't want to get in trouble for it. I dug the silver dollar the man on the ferry had given me out of my pocket and shoved it into the boy's hand and then ran away as quickly as I could. The girl called after me to wait, but I didn't slow down.

When I finally caught up with Zeb, he had a hole going in the sand and had already hit water. Somebody was shooting a pistol down the beach. Dogs barked and barked. There were no whales. The wind made you feel like you'd just fall over if it were to stop. The brother and sister were as tiny as birds way down the beach, walking, shimmering away or toward us, I couldn't tell. It was time to go. The waves were breaking far offshore, and the sound was part of the wind, like the band had been parts of a song. The sun was in the spot that told me I needed to go. I watched Zeb run off and didn't say a word to stop him. People were hanging a swing from the bowsprit of the shipwreck. A man hung from it by one arm and set his loops, and then dropped to the hard sand.

When I returned to the veteran's grounds, Mother gave me a cheese and onion sandwich. My shoes were full of sand, and my eyes were watery from the wind and sand, but it was quiet on this leeward side of the swale. Mother and Edna were sitting on the blanket spread on the ground and sharing a bottle of beer.

“Where's Zeb?” Edna asked.

“He's on the beach.”

“Why didn't you stay with him?” Mother asked.

“Didn't feel like it.” I turned my back on them and wandered through the trees with my sandwich and watched the crowd. Long tables were set up and the veterans, some in uniform, were getting their food first while everyone else cheered and clapped. I recognized some of these men and it was only today that anybody put up with them or encouraged them in any way. Two dogs were stuck together, and a woman in a green dress was smacking them with a stick to get them apart. People were laughing at her and trying not to look.

I sat down next to my mother on the blanket. I was tired and wanted to lie down. Edna poured me a bit of beer into a jar that had pickles in it before and I took it and drank it. I offered up the empty jar for more.

“That's enough.”

I set the jar down and lay back and studied the fuzzy low limbs of the cedars. The band marched by, playing some kind of waltz and the veterans were behind them with their plates full of food. They thought they wanted to go and eat on the beach but they were wrong. Somebody should tell them. But they knew, they all knew what they were doing. The man that had kicked me knew. I smiled thinking of the surprise waiting for all the picnickers when they crested the swale. It would blow the food off their plates. They'd have sand in their teeth, packed into their gums like a dog that'd been eating horse turds.

The sun was lower and there were clouds. Mother was gone, and so was Edna. Everyone was gone. I had a blanket on me, and I didn't know how long I'd been asleep. The tables were no longer set, and the chairs were stacked up under the trees. I hurried to my feet and ran toward the beach. The wind knocked me back, and it took me a moment to realize that there was no one there. The shipwreck was there, but that was all, driftwood and the shipwreck but no people. I stayed on the swale and held my hands out to touch the tall grass and walked north toward the harbor mouth. Maybe the ferryboats had come and Mother forgot me. I thought I should go back, and then far up ahead I saw something on the beach. As I ran, the waves sucked at the sand and the wind blew foam at me, bubbles racing, birds pecking at the sand, fat as turkeys. It was a group of people gathered around something big and gray, not a rock, not stone. I lowered my head and ran as fast as I could down to the hard-packed wet sand, and I could go really fast there and jump the slick waves and foam and the driftwood.

I'd gotten my whale. It was a finback and it was dead, but I'd wanted to see a whale and I did. Mother saw me and came over and put her arm around me.

“It's terrible.”

“You left me.” I had yet to catch my breath.

“You're old enough to wake up alone and not be scared.”

“But I didn't know where everybody went.”

“You found us, that's all that matters.”

The bugle player from the band started on some mournful song but someone yelled at him to shut it and he stopped. The big man, Mr. Tartan, was there and he didn't look nearly as sad as everyone else. A few of the drunken soldiers looked like they might weep, like the whale had been their friend, like the holiday was for it instead of them. People were touching the whale's hide, petting it. A group of Indians, three boys and two grown women, were on the hill watching us. Mr. Tartan stood apart from the crowd and watched them back, and then he turned and wandered in the direction of Westport.

I found Zeb at the tail with some other boys digging out the sand from beneath it. I found a stick and joined in. The tail would soon be the roof of our fort. My pants and shoes were soaked through from the seeping sand.

The man that had kicked me found me down in the hole with the other boys. “Did you hear me, boy? I said I'm sorry I was rough with you before.”

“It's okay.”

“I didn't mean to scare you. I didn't hurt you, did I?”

“No. I'm fine.”

“All right.” The man joined his friends and as a group they returned to the shipwreck. He was walking with some of the sailors.

“Duncan,” Mother said. “It's time we get going if we don't want to be left behind.”

“Come on out of there,” Edna said to Zeb. “I don't want to hear you complaining about being cold on the way home.”

“I won't,” Zeb said as he climbed out.

I was right behind him. “What'll happen to the whale?” I asked my mother.

“It'll rot, I'd guess. Maybe if there's a storm it'll get carried out to sea. The birds will be after it as soon as we leave, I know that.” She looked up at the Indians but didn't say anything else.

The walk back to the wharf was tiresome and cold and the wind was everybody's enemy. The boy I'd fought with earlier was being helped along by two women. His sister pointed me out to them. Mother and Edna stopped to ask if they needed help and the boy told on me.

“Is this true?” Mother asked.

“I didn't mean to hurt him,” I said.

“He started it,” Zeb said. “He hit Duncan first.”

Right then Edna's little baby started to cry so her and Zeb had to keep walking. We'd see them at the wharf. I waved good-bye to him because I was on my own now.

“Don't see how it matters who started it,” one of the women said. “His eye's a mess.”

“He needs to see the doctor,” the other woman said.

“Are one of you his mother?” Mother asked.

“No, ma'am, the Boyertons are in Seattle. We're watching the children for them.”

Mother knelt down in front of the boy and pulled his hands away from his face. There was a bruise above his eye, and the eye itself was bloodred and teary. He couldn't hold it open without crying.

“What's your name?”

“Oliver.”

“Oliver. And is this your sister?”

“Yes.”

“What's her name?”

“Teresa.”

“Hello, Teresa.”

“Hello.”

“Are you going to be all right?” Mother asked the boy.

He shook his head no. “My eye hurts.”

“I know it does. I know. Duncan, apologize to Oliver for hurting his eye.”

“It was an accident,” the little girl said. She was staring at me like she knew me.

I felt the blood go hot into my face. I could tell she wanted to say something else, something mean that would hurt me but she couldn't with my mother there. Oliver had his hands back over his eye and the two women ushered him on.

“Say good-bye,” Mother said.

“Bye.”

“Bye,” the girl said to me.

We heard the whistle and everybody hurried but we were too late. I could see Zeb and his mother at the stern waving to us. Everybody was waving. We waved back because what else was there to do? and watched them until they were gone. The water boiled white and the wake sloshed out in a V and rolled white-edged a few times and then went to waves and then healed completely to blue water. The smoke from the stack caught the wind and was gone, like steam in a warming room. People said it'd be an hour for the next one to come. Mother and I found a good stump out of the wind to sit on and wait. The boy and the girl and their keepers stayed on the other side of the crowd from us. I didn't see them again until we got to town. The clouds rolled in and blocked all of the sun.

While we were filing up the plank the rain started again and everybody grumbled, but when I looked back at my mother, she was smiling. We found our spot and she tucked me in against her side and we were off. I slept and missed seeing everything again.

Father was at the docks when we arrived. He was falling-down drunk and covered in mud. He'd lost his hat. We couldn't do anything with him. He tried to hug me and knocked me over and I had to fight my way out of his arms. Mother pushed him back and was embarrassed, and the women she'd been speaking with when we docked looked away. The girl and the boy, Teresa and Oliver, went by and stared, and my face burned with shame. It was Mr. Tartan that hauled my father to his feet and dragged him up the mole to the Sailor's Union. We waited outside and when Mr. Tartan returned he took Mother aside and spoke to her. He touched her shoulder and bowed slightly and went back inside.

“We're going home.”

“What about—”

“He'll stay here. Mr. Tartan has given him a bed for the night.”

“The fireworks will start soon.”

“We'll be able to see them on our way. From the water. You'll see.” She took my hand, and we walked the crowded streets toward the wharf. There were stages set up and music was being played and there were jugglers and a man on a unicycle. I watched a family of Indians walking up the hill into the logged forest until they disappeared into the slash. A man rode by us with his eyes closed and fell off his horse and another horseman ran him over. Mother didn't let me stop, not once, and soon we were back on the ferry that would take us home. The deckhands' uniforms had lost their luster, and they all looked tired. They lit the lights on deck and we headed out in the gloom of the evening. We'd left the celebration behind.

My mother turned to me and held me by the shoulders. “I don't want you to ever feel like you're responsible for your father.”

I nodded, but I didn't understand.

“He did that to himself. He doesn't do it to hurt us. He does it because he's no self-respect. That isn't your fault.”

“Will he come home tomorrow?”

“I doubt it.”

“He peed himself.”

She stopped rubbing my shoulders and held me still. “I need you to understand something,” she said. “There are choices you'll make that will determine where you end up. Often you'll make bad decisions and regret them. Do you understand me?”

“Yes.”

“Don't lie to me. Don't ever lie to me.” I could feel her hands shaking, and her eyes were filling with tears.

“I'm not lying.” But I was. She wanted me to, she'd cry if I didn't.

“No matter what happens, where you are,” she said, “you get to choose how you act. In the end that might be all the choice you'll ever get, but it's a lot. It's more than most people can handle.” She hugged me and held me close, and I could feel the ferry's engine all through my feet and into my legs.

The sound was a crack like a gunshot but too open sounding to be a rifle or even a shotgun, and when we turned from each other I saw the spray of red and green fireworks splash against the wet sky.

E
dna Parker came by
with Zeb earlier to give us the news of Jacob's camp coming home early. After they left, I made dinner. Duncan killed a rooster, and I baked it with yellow potatoes and onions. I even made a carrot cake for dessert, a celebration. I scrubbed and oiled the floor, and the mazes that came up in the woodgrain were hypnotizing and kept me hostage for I don't know how long. I returned from my ruminations and in the silence of the day concluded that this was our home, and Jacob was my man. Perhaps it was that simple. After everything, maybe that's all it could be, was simple.

Duncan was supposed to be watching for his father on the road, but when I last saw him he was walking away into the forest. He was in love with a girl from school, and you couldn't get the smile off his face with pumice and potash. I guess we were both caught in the throes of a late fall romance, but mine was amazingly and of course not so much so, with my husband.

In each of Jacob's letters were neat little check marks in the margins for all the days of his temperance. Last I counted nearly four hundred before I got tired and lost and quit. I was proud of him. He was delivering on his promise to me. Our vows felt renewed. When I told Edna how I felt, she said: “We're all fallible, dear, but some are more foul than able.” She'd brought some of her homebrew over, and we shared a glass. Zeb and Duncan were outside, throwing knives at the side of the barn, even though Edna and I both had told them to stop. We could hear the blade thumping home and Zeb laughing. Duncan was growing into himself. He was already as tall as Jacob and was darkening and outgrowing Zeb's playfulness, as if my wish for him to become a man was coming true. I regretted begrudging him his childhood. “But Jacob has been making the effort,” Edna said. “I'll give him that.” And I thought: I'll give him that too. I'll give him a chance. I'll give him my heart. Again.