Текст книги "If I Fall, If I Die"

Автор книги: Michael Christie

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Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 20 страниц)

21

“Here,” said Jonah at Will’s front door, holding up a sealed plastic baggie of fingerprints pressed neatly onto squares of cardstock, “I lifted these from your water bottle that first night we met Titus.”

Will removed the cards and examined the prints. Good definition on the whorls and crisp detail for each digit. “Looks like you managed some really good pulls.”

“I wanted you to have them because I’m finished,” said Jonah.

“But we’re getting so close!” said Will. “We’ll go down to the elevator tomorrow, tell Titus what the Butler said and see if he talks. Don’t you want to know what this proof is the Butler is looking for?”

“Will, last night after we met the Butler I got scared and told my brothers what happened and they freaked. They’re talking about leaving Thunder Bay, moving us to some little lake up north where our auntie lives. I had to promise them I wouldn’t go back down there to keep them from packing the van.”

“That’s easy. You’ll sneak out when they go to work. They can’t—”

“Will!” Jonah yelled, his face hard with disbelief. “He knows who I am! And from the way those wolves were sniffing at you, they’ve probably already figured out who you are too. Something bad is going to happen. I know it. I’ve had dreams about it. I just can’t risk it anymore.”

“Something bad is always going to happen,” said Will, stepping Outside and shutting the door so his mother wouldn’t hear. “No matter where you are or what you’re doing. You’re starting to sound like my mom.”

Jonah shook his head somberly. “You know what Indians do best in movies?” he said. “We die. It’s like our job. We look pretty, then scream and get shot from a brown-spotted horse with no saddle. I watched all those movies growing up and I thought dying in a hail of rifle bullets seemed … I don’t know, like … natural. Something I’d do one day, same as having a kid or leaving Thunder Bay.

“But you know why I really stopped being friends with Marcus?” Jonah continued. “It wasn’t because he broke his skateboard. He could’ve bought ten more with the money he was making from the Butler. It was because I was sick of worrying about him. Sick of lying awake all night while he slept somewhere outside, sick of watching him set bombs or taunt the biggest hockey players or skate out in front of cars just to see if they’d stop. I already worry about my brothers enough.

“That’s why I started talking to you,” Jonah continued, “because you were different. Cautious. Safe. Even when you did dangerous things, I never worried about you. Until lately.”

“But he’s still our friend,” Will said. “He should be here. Like we are.”

Jonah shook his head. “There’s no such thing in the world as ‘should,’ Will. Haven’t you figured that out yet? There is only whatever happens.”

“But maybe you’re wrong. Maybe we can still help him leave. We owe that to him.”

“You know I’ve always meant to ask you this,” Jonah said, his voice rising. “You think Marcus was your friend, but he shot you in the head with a rock, then stole your garden hose the first time you met him.”

“He didn’t mean to hurt me. He was … afraid. Just like you are now. It’s not good for us to be afraid. Trust me. Marcus taught me that. And finding him is the only way I can prove that everything Outside is actually safe.”

“Prove to who? Your mom?”

“To everyone.”

“Well, brace yourself for it, Will: it’s not.”

They stood in silence for a moment.

“You actually want me to say it?” Jonah continued, his voice quiet now. “Okay. You’re right. I’m scared. For you. For me. It’s hard enough for an Indian to make it to eighteen in this place and still have a pulse. Even if you’re doing everything right. But I refuse to vanish like Marcus. Or end up like that guy in the wheelbarrow. Call me a megapussy all you want. But skateboarding is as close to danger as I need to get.”

“We won’t even have to go near the elevators,” Will said. “We can still investigate from a distance, like we said.”

Jonah sighed and swiped away his bangs. They both sat on the top step. “When I was a kid and we first moved down to Thunder Bay,” Jonah said, “I used to think White people were trying to kill me, not just the social workers who tried to take me away—like all of them. For a while I didn’t leave the house, exactly like your mom. I’d stay in the basement and imagine them coming in the windows like zombies or vampires, trying to suck my blood, eat my brains with teaspoons. I used to concoct ways to defend myself against them. I’d practice judo and draw all these diagrams of explosives and guns and knives. I made traps, snares, and machetes hanging over the windows—that’s how I learned to make those match bombs. It was around that same time I stopped talking because I felt like my words were feeding them, giving them strength.”

“Nobody’s trying to kill you, Jonah,” Will said after some silence.

“You sure?” Jonah said, making to leave.

“You don’t want to help me anymore, that’s fine,” Will said desperately. “But winter’s going to last for three more months. What’re you going to do? Play hockey?”

Jonah shook his head. “I’m going home where it’s safe, and I’m going to stay there—I’d like to see those two try to come get me. Then I’m going to drink some hot chocolate and read two hundred books and have every known human disease memorized before spring comes. Then in a few years I’m going to get a crappy job like my brothers and save some money and go to med school in California and skateboard every single damn day with a big stupid grin on my face and I won’t ever think about Marcus or Thunder Bay or old Titus, not once.”

“Wait,” Will implored as Jonah backed down Will’s steps, “I have an idea …”

But he was out of ideas. Since he’d been Outside, he’d learned that fear was only a default setting, like how the TV always starts at channel 3 when you first turn it on. That everyone is born afraid of everything, but most people build calluses over top of it. His mother didn’t have calluses because she never touched anything, never even tried. Of the things Will was most afraid of—bees, wolves, witches, getting kidnapped, the clunking noise the dryer made when it stopped, calling Angela and telling her he’d liked their kiss, the Butler, the Bald Man, rebar, shovels—he was most afraid that, even after all his bravery and scars and near-death experiences, he still couldn’t survive the Outside without Jonah.

Jonah set the small vinyl case containing their fingerprinting kit on the bottom stair. “See you around, Will,” he said.

22

The following day, Will wrote to his principal as his mother to say there would be no need to send him to Templeton because they were moving back to San Francisco. Then Will spent the morning alternating between practicing fingerprinting, crying into his pillow, doing jumping jacks, and reading the Thrashers Jonah had left behind.

To cheer himself up he practiced pulling prints from difficult places like the toilet bowl and some trim in London. Then he stood on a chair and pulled one from the light fixture in New York: large prints that weren’t his own, yet looked oddly familiar. He compared them with the small library he’d amassed so far in a photo album, prints belonging to the mailman (doorknob), the grocery deliveryman (milk bottle), his mother (glass of water beside her bed), and now Titus (from the prints Jonah had given him), which matched exactly those he’d pulled from the fixture. Will recompared the prints ten times in tingly disbelief, but there was no question they were the same.

Titus had been in his room.

It was concussive, thunderous, his two worlds colliding like brakeless trains—the Inside and the Outside—and in the great crash Will knew that he’d been wrong about everything. Jonah was right, Titus had done something to Marcus in one of his black moods, and concocted that story to cover it up. And Will and his mother were next. Titus had been watching them from the yard for months, maybe longer, peering at them through the windows, writing that note, but now he’d come Inside, and any night he’d creep up on their beds and grip their throats. With horror Will remembered now how Titus always got shifty and red faced whenever the subject of his mother came up. Maybe on some level his mother had sensed his menace all along—maybe Titus always was the real reason for the Black Lagoon, and suddenly an idea parachuted into Will’s head. Though he had settled long ago on not being a genius, he was smart enough to know exactly what measures he had to take to set everything right and keep everyone he held dear safe.

“Can I get you anything, Mom?” His mother was sitting up in her bed in San Francisco, staring into the darkened wall like it was the grille of a speeding truck.

“No, thanks, Will. But it’s good to hear your voice,” she said, her breathing quick and shallow, as if her lungs were tiny as walnuts and located right beneath her neck. Will realized he’d never seen his mother take a deep breath in his life. “I’ve missed you,” she said.

Will sat on her bed. Their bed. He could barely see her in the dimness, except for her eyes, green and crystalline. Most of the bulbs in the house were out now. At night it was like the Middle Ages. He’d thought she would eventually get fed up and change them herself, but she used lamps until they burned out and then ordered flashlights and a headlamp that she wore whenever she forced her way into Venice.

“Want me to change it?” he said, pointing to her light fixture. “I could, but I’m not wearing the wetsuit.”

“Would you?” she said, animating slightly. “I didn’t want to ask. Everything I say makes you so mad lately.”

Will returned with a new bulb, and soon the room jumped into light and she winced and shut her eyes. Sitting on her bed again, turning the dead bulb in his hands, he watched light surf down through her bedraggled hair. She shifted and a smell puffed from her covers like turned milk.

“Was that Jonah I heard at the door yesterday?”

“He and I might not be friends anymore,” Will said.

“That’s a shame,” she said. “I like him.”

Will nodded, and they sat for a while, her hand on his thigh, as Outside trees sifted the wind. It was the first time in months he’d felt any sympathy for her. Will recalled how he used to find her at the window when he was still Inside, sighing, looking not down at her book but out into the streetlights. He wondered if she had any idea what she’d given up, what she’d wasted all these years Inside, what she had yet to waste. If she had any idea how beautiful she still was, how many people there were Outside for her still to meet.

“Have they found that boy yet?” she asked after a while, smoothing his hair. “The one who was missing?”

“Yeah, they did,” Will said, mercifully. “He was camping and didn’t tell anybody.”

“Oh,” she said, “that’s a relief.” But if she relaxed further, Will couldn’t tell.

“I remember a time when you were very young, maybe three or four,” she continued, picking at the duvet fabric with her pale fingers. “I pulled you from the bath and stood you on the mat. I stepped out to the linen closet to grab a towel, and I returned to find you looking down at your little wet body, and you were sobbing. You said, ‘My body is crying.’ It nearly broke my heart. I wasn’t sure I could take something that sweet and sad at the same time.”

“But it wasn’t,” Will said. “I was wrong.”

“You’ve always been such a sensitive boy, honey. I never wanted to see you hurt.”

“Mom,” Will said, “you won’t need to worry about me anymore. There’s just one last thing I need to do tomorrow morning. Something I left behind that I need to get. But after that I’m staying Inside again. Like you said, I’m too sensitive. It’s too much for me Outside.” She brushed his ear with her thumb, and suddenly a sadness overtook him. “I hate Thunder Bay,” he said in a sob. He was so tired of being endangered and watched and confused.

“Oh, please don’t stay home on my account,” she said. “You were right not to let me hold you back. I’ve been selfish. I needed you too much. I never should’ve brought us here from Toronto. This place is so dangerous for a boy.”

“Can’t we leave?” Will said into her chest. “We could go tonight. Can’t you just make yourself get on a plane?”

“I wish it were that simple. Years ago, maybe. Not now.”

“We could knock you out? I could get you some grain alcohol or give you some drugs and put you in a car, and you’d wake up someplace you weren’t afraid of?”

She shook her head. “That place doesn’t exist, Will.”

He could have tried explaining the mess with the Butler and Marcus and Titus. Other mothers would have called the police. Demanded action. Sorted it out. Or left town. But not his. She’d been Inside too long. And it was only getting worse. The truth would destroy her. All that remained was the sick feeling that if only he’d kept painting his stupid masterpiece that day and not been lured out by the bang of Marcus’s match bomb, everything wouldn’t have gone so terribly wrong. The Outside wouldn’t be ruined if he hadn’t been there to ruin it.

But he said nothing, and soon sleep wafted over from her body into his, sharing it.

Relaxation Time

That morning she woke, marooned in bed—her only lifeboat now in a sea of panic. Will was gone, his imprint still rumpled in the sheets beside her, the doorbell ringing, had been ringing for some time. She knew instantly that to set foot on the floor today would mean risking everything.

It rang again. Deliverymen were rarely this persistent. Will had locked himself out. Or it was Jonah, wanting to make up after their fight. Or some official, here because something had … she threw the sheets from her body, reached and guzzled an entire bottle of codeine syrup, then snapped her elastic twenty-five times and drew six deep breaths. Just as the codeine slid into her bloodstream like liquid lead, she dropped to the floor fast enough to keep the panic from grabbing her ankles and darted through the towers of paperbacks and trash and unopened packages and mail to the door. She threw it open and before her stood an older man, in a suit and topcoat, with a tempest of white hair and an apologetic smile.

“Sorry to trouble you, Ms. Cardiel,” the man said warmly, “but I went by the school today, and the principal informed me that your son, Will, hadn’t been there for some time. So I thought I’d stop by to chat with him here.”

“He’s out,” she said, the codeine a cold smolder in her now. Was she swaying or was it the wind in the trees?

“Oh. Out?” the man said. “Any idea where?”

“No, I don’t,” she said, bracing her hand on the doorframe, fighting to keep her eyes focused upon his, and not the pure disorientation and terror that lay beyond him.

“You don’t know where your son is?” he said, surprised.

Her mind gluey, she nearly told him that she’d begged Will to stay, but he just wouldn’t listen, then stopped herself. Who did he say he was? Had he?

“You don’t look well, Ms. Cardiel,” he said. “Are you feeling ill? Perhaps I should come in?”

“Wait,” she said, resetting, trying not to sway. The codeine made the floor impossibly soft beneath her feet, like turned earth. But he was familiar somehow, with his theatrical face, like someone from a Fellini film. “Who are you? And why are you looking for my son?”

“Oh, my apologies,” he said with a wide smile. “My name is George Butler. And, come to think of it, I remember you and your brother as children, down at the elevator in the old days, bringing your father’s supper.”

She placed him now. He was the grain inspector at the harbor, who Theodore called “the bug man.” In snow-white coveralls he’d go around checking lakeboats for pests, weevils and worms, before giving the okay to ship them out. He was educated and knew grain as well as Theodore. He was also the one selling Charlie those pills for his asthma that kept him up every night.

“It was truly a shame what happened to your brother. But I have a feeling that wherever he is, it’s a much better place,” he said. “You were living away, I remember? Of course I’m in a different line of work now,” he went on. “You wouldn’t recognize very much on the harbor these days, I’m afraid, Ms. Cardiel. Unfortunately, child apprehension is currently the only growth industry in Thunder Bay.”

“Wait, did you say child—”

“Oh, no,” he said, putting his hand to his heart, “that’s certainly not why I’m here, Ms. Cardiel. But I am afraid your son has found himself mixed up with some boys who are currently on my caseload. Will’s got a bit of his uncle’s—shall we say—moxie? But I’m here to ensure his safety.”

Everything was going too fast for her. She’d expected a deliveryman, a quick exchange. Her mind was sliding. This man’s mouth didn’t match his words.

“Are you sure you don’t know where your son is?”

“He said he had something important to do today,” she said thinly, shutting her eyes to keep the light out.

“Did he, Ms. Cardiel?” he said, leaning closer. “Like what?”

“He said …” She felt a great itchiness under her scalp; the codeine was already waning. She wasn’t sure how much more of the blinding doorway she could stand. “He said he’d left something behind, and he had to go get it.”

“Maybe he was referring to this?” From behind his back he raised Will’s old helmet, dangling from his finger by the chin strap. “We found it in an abandoned shack frequented by criminals. It has your last name written in it, Ms. Cardiel. At first I thought it belonged to another boy in town, but now based on what you’re saying, I’m convinced that your son is in grave danger. Think hard for me, please: do you have any idea where your son went today?”

She braced herself against the door, everything churning, the subway platform finally closing over her, and into her tumbling head came all the smells she’d been finding on Will’s clothes when he returned home from school: grease, sweat, blood, sawn lumber.

Grain.

23

Will found him sitting in a straight-backed chair in the workhouse, the woodstove roaring like a cast-iron dragon. Titus had shaved, his half-grayed hair dangling at his unlined cheeks like slips of smoke. Beardless, his face was even more fearsome, all diamond-cut angles and the scars of hard Outside living, but younger than Will had expected. Closer to his mother’s age. Titus sat with eyes glazed and fixed, sweat sheening his brow, both hands plunged in the pockets of his parka with large coils of wire wound around the sleeves.

“It’s you, Icarus Number One,” he said, clearing his throat and twisting his head with a queer surprise. His voice was hoarse, and Will pictured him awake all night, yelling at ghosts, Marcus’s included. “Sturdy choice of headgear,” he said.

Will tugged at the strap under his chin. It was tight, but his orange Helmet still fit, though the cranial pressure had him feeling a touch dazed. Perhaps all that he’d learned Outside had made his head bigger. “Felt like I needed a little extra protection today,” he said.

“And your compatriot?” said Titus.

“Don’t know,” Will said. “He won’t be coming down here anymore.”

Titus’s face fell and he shook his head. “I wasn’t ever in much danger of triumphing as his favorite citizen, but that Icarus could piss his name in a sheet of plywood,” he said. “You two should congeal together. Especially if you insist on perpetuating more ventures to this jurisdiction.”

“Well, this is my last time coming down here. I came to ask you some questions.”

“Allow me one last suffrage,” Titus added, standing. “If you’re capable. Plenty of time for exchanges as we venture.”

“What do you need me to do?”

With a twitch, Titus turned to the window to regard the sun-dazzled water. “There are ocean salmon in there. How they established is nobody’s purview. Stowaways likely. Salties suck ’em up as ballast and dump ’em here. When I was a youngster you could catch whitefish right off the piers. Baitless. Clean as a whistle. Fish lined up and bought tickets to get a hook in their lip, like it was fashionable. Now this juncture is so chocked with heavy metal and sick outflow, you’re better off snacking on your chemistry set than some fresh-pulled whitefish.” Behind everything Titus said was a monologue of murmur, a faint whistle, like the ghostly scrapings of his mother’s fingers on the strings of her guitar.

“Is that why you won’t drink the water? Because it’s polluted?” Will asked, but from there Titus tipped into nonsense, every so often pausing to lurch at something, like a dog snapping at an invisible fly. He cleared his throat for long periods while mumbling, just angry syllables hissed under his breath.

In the pocket of his hooded sweatshirt, Will gripped the handles of the garrote he’d constructed that morning. He’d removed a string from his mother’s guitar and tied it between two pieces of dowel he’d once made nunchucks with. On his walk to the harbor, Will tried to buttress his courage with the image of Titus pinning Marcus down near the creek and inflicting him with more scars, like that pastor and his wife had done, but it wouldn’t resolve. So Will settled on picturing Titus Inside, rooting through their drawers, perusing Will’s masterpieces, thumbing his mother’s page-turners, watching her sleep in San Francisco, poised to smother her with one of her malodorous pillows.

Then a rustling came from Titus’s coat pockets, and this seemed to evict him from whatever reverie he’d been lost in. “Let’s flitter,” said Titus.

They descended the stairs to the water’s edge, where Titus, breathing desperately, tugged a sheet of tattered canvas away to reveal a wooden skiff lodged in some reedy mud near a clutch of unidentifiable rubble. Titus lifted a pair of boots from the hull, stepped out of his foul shoes and put them on. Will didn’t even need to examine his footprints for the hexagon shape to be certain they matched, same as his grandfather’s.

“We’ll load her trim and even, so she doesn’t capsize or go to toothpicks,” Titus said, tugging the massive hose that Will and Jonah had assembled out from a thicket of goldenrod nearby. As they worked, coiling the hose into the small skiff like a noodle onto a plate, Will saw a fish carcass bob near the shore in a blizzard of flies. Titus also tossed into the boat several grocery bags full of stones. Soon Will began to sweat, and he scratched at his hair, itchy under his tight Helmet.

“Hop in, Icarus Number One,” Titus said after everything was loaded, pointing to the small area they’d managed to leave clear at the front of the vessel. “We’ll chatter while we venture.”

Pure terror riveted Will in place.

“ ’Course you’re not impelled to,” Titus said. “Not everyone’s chopped up for seamanship. Marcus quivered at the outset.”

“You took Marcus out on the lake?”

“Taught him the rigging I know. He rightly flourished. But sailing wasn’t my teacup. Mine were lakers. Salties mostly. But we need to endeavor this quick before the cove ices to the breakwater,” he said. “Won’t have another swing this year.” Will thought it best not to remind Titus it was spring, in case it agitated him.

Will knew this was his last chance to get answers from Titus, and his stomach felt like a swimming pool with a thousand maniacal kids in there, all splashing and screaming. Titus cleared his wrecked throat as the skiff bobbed at Will’s shins. A song his mother used to sing with her guitar came into his head: “Lord I can’t go a-home, this a-way …,” meaning poor and naked and destroyed, and Will felt the same way. His real life Outside had been short, but he’d already managed to lose everything dear to him—Marcus, Jonah, Angela, skateboarding—and if he didn’t confront Titus, how long would it take for his mother to fall deeper into herself, until she was not much more than a shadow, a wraith? How long after would MacVicar call Social Services, who’d whisk him to some foster home, perhaps even the one where Marcus had lived, where Will would share a room with four other sad, abandoned boys? But if he could force answers from Titus, nobody would need to be afraid, not Jonah, not his mother, not Will. The Butler would call off his wolves. Maybe even Marcus would return. The Outside would go back to how it was, before Will had ruined it. Who better than Will understood that those who were not brave, who didn’t perform dangerous feats, wound up imprisoned in a bedroom somewhere, staring at the wall, terrified to breathe.

“It’s a good thing I told everyone I know where I was going today,” Will belted out confidently, even though he didn’t have anyone left he could tell. “Otherwise, they might be worried.”

“Sturdy hypothesis, Icarus Number One,” Titus said with an undisturbed face. “Can’t be over thoughtful, specially bobbing on the water.”

Will climbed into the seat, and Titus pushed off and pointed the skiff at the gap in the breakwater a mile out, the skiff’s bow clicking against the meager waves. The water looked frigid, and Will wished he’d worn his lightbulb-changing wetsuit. Titus lowered the outboard and began yanking the starter ferociously. When it caught, he blared the engine, and the roar buried the ambient hush of the harbor.

As they plowed away from shore, the skiff low in the water with the weight of the hose, the air whisked with impossible freshness across Will’s face, recalling to him that first walk along the creek, when everything was still amazing and shot with wonder. He watched the water darken from blue to black beneath them like a bruise. Aside from that time his mother said he’d once smacked his head on a pool deck, Will had never been immersed in water deeper than their bathtub. Swimming was an activity he couldn’t even consider. He only hoped the protective foam in his Helmet would keep him afloat if it came to that.

Looking back at Thunder Bay, Will recalled a painting his mother showed him in an art book she said had belonged to his grandfather. Ships in a harbor, some carts going alongside a cliff. “See anything?” she’d said. When Will replied no, she pointed to legs sprouting from a tiny splash in the corner like a flower. “I don’t get it,” Will said. “Icarus,” she said, indicating the splash. “He flew so high the sun melted his waxen wings and he fell to Earth. Except nobody noticed. Nobody cared. The world’s like that sometimes, Will. It’s too heartbreaking to look at.”

As they cruised farther out into the bay, Titus began rummaging in the pockets of his parka. He produced something, seemed to reject it, then placed it beside him on the bench seat. Will recognized it as a chickadee, except it wasn’t moving. Then Titus took out a wicked-looking fish knife and set it beside the bird. Will tried again to force himself to imagine Titus slicing Marcus, his throat, his chest, but he still couldn’t stitch the vision together in his mind. “Those elevators’re the tallest strivers for hundreds of miles!” Titus yelled over the motor’s white roar, pointing back at the harbor. “In my era, men came from all over, either to toil in them, or to toss themselves from the top! Some sad souls secured jobs only to perform that!”

“Why are your fingerprints in my house?” Will heard himself yell. And when Titus didn’t react, Will knew he’d only whispered it into the snoring of the motor. Soon the skiff passed through the southernmost gap in the breakwater—a giant’s version of a stone garden wall, car-size chunks of granite fitted together, all of it submerged hundreds of feet below—and Will knew that this passage had altered something fundamental inside him, that he was finally something different from a boy. Titus yelled about the millions of pounds of stone that went into the breakwater, the equivalent of five pyramids sunk beneath the lake. “Indian labor built it, mostly!” he said. “They put up a hefty chunk of Thunder Bay, but nobody honors their exertions!”

Out on the unsheltered water, a chop kicked up. No other vessels were on the lake except for a giant lakeboat anchored miles past the breakwater that Titus yelled was from Brazil and carried potash. Then Titus cut the engine and set the skiff to drift, the weight of their cargo dragging them on. The vessel lapped through the waves with the sound of slapping someone’s wet belly. A powerful inevitable feeling stood up in Will and informed him that he had this situation under control: he’d been training for this moment his whole life—all his Destructivity Experiments and brave Outside acts had prepared him well. He’d be as brave as Jonah jumping on that wolf, as brave as Marcus snatching the map from the Butler. He’d overwhelm Titus, not head on, but sneak up, garrote him, and force him to reveal where Marcus was. Already the man could barely breathe, so Will imagined strangling him would be something like popping a balloon with his bare hands or trying a new skateboard trick, scary and unwieldy at first, but easy once you barged through and tried it.

“You hungry, Icarus Number One?” Titus asked.

When Will shook his head, Titus lifted the dead chickadee from the bench and neatly stuffed it into his mouth like a pastry. He sat chewing, silhouetted by open lake. Stunned, Will listened to Titus’s soft crunches, his graying hair flying in the wind and eyes somewhere near gone. It occurred to him that Titus was leagues crazier than he or Jonah ever suspected and had suffered damage more titanic than anyone he’d ever met Outside. Titus swallowed, sucked air through his teeth, and stood. The skiff wobbled unsteadily under his weight and that of the hoses and the shopping bags of rocks, and a few pints of water splashed over the gunwales. Will tightened his grip on his seat as gulls whirlwinded overhead.

“Those resemble seagulls, but that’s negatory!” Titus said pointing upwards, too loud, as though the motor was still going. “They’re lake gulls!” He whirled around as they passed over, and the skiff tipped beneath him.

“Can you please sit down, Titus?” said Will.

“Gorge themselves on garbage all the livelong day! Riddled with blight, metastatics, and parasites!”

The skiff teetered worse, and a larger slap of water came over the side. Will saw it pooling beneath the labyrinth of hose. “Titus!” Will said.