Kingfisher(13)

He felt his throat dry. He wanted it. He would take it. He set it down on the desk noiselessly, as though someone might hear the faint slide of metal and come to its rescue. He had never stolen anything in his life. He would not steal this, he told himself swiftly. He would pay for it. He pulled out his wallet, rummaged recklessly through his cash, wondering how much his room, all the beers he had drunk, the amazing supper he had eaten, and the knife would cost him. How much it had all been worth.

He pulled out a credit card finally, tossed it on the desk. They would find it there beside the cabinet key, and know who had taken the knife. Let it cost whatever they wanted.

He crossed the room swiftly, hid the knife in his bag under a shirt. Then he left as quickly, closing the bar door quietly behind him. There was no one in the parking lot, nothing but the little Metro, like the last boat left at the dock.

As he pulled out, he thought he heard a shout. He sped up and out onto the highway. The place was empty, after all, no one left to call him back. Everyone who knew his name was gone.





4


Carrie, wakened early the next morning by a cacophony of crows saluting the sun, listened, before she opened her eyes, to the quality of silence within the walls. The old farmhouse, with its plain pastel paint, its ancient linoleum, and flaking sills, had its own familiar language of creaks and rattles. It seemed strangely still that morning, as though it, too, listened. No random snores, no running water, no comments from floorboards or door hinges. No Merle, she thought, and opened her eyes.

She was used to that. Her father was a random occurrence, like most of the weather around Chimera Bay. A squall, some sunshine, hail, a rainbow, one followed another in a perpetual guessing game. Merle might be asleep in his bed when she woke; he might be just coming through the door to fall into bed. He might be on a log, or up a tree, or sitting in the truck having a beer for breakfast with one of the nameless forest-dwellers who carried everything they owned in a leaf-and-lawn bag. More surprising, he might be getting out of the truck with a bag of groceries. Sometimes, he was simply nowhere at all, where he’d been since the Friday Nite before.

Carrie showered and dressed for work, then wandered outside, chewing on a piece of toast. There was no Merle on the horizon. The noisy choir of crows had disappeared as well, leaving the landscape to a single moon-white egret, standing motionless in six inches of silvery flow. Beside the stream, and staring as raptly at some flowering skunk cabbage, was Zed Cluny in his pajamas.

He raised his head and saw her as she started toward him. He had moved into Proffit Slough the previous year, renting a tiny cabin that stood on a knoll above the stream. Carrie had found him chatting amiably with Merle one morning; the fact that Merle was sitting on Zed’s cabin roof at the time didn’t seem to bother either one of them. Carrie went over to claim her father and got a pleasing eyeful of Zed. He and Carrie had worn a trail through the grasses between them, much like the rest of the wildlife in the slough.

He watched her from the other side of the narrow stream that was a vein in the vast tracery of water constantly pushed and pulled, rising and lowering in the tidal flow. He had a sweet face that hadn’t yet hardened into itself, straight white-gold hair that he trimmed into a lank bowl on his head, dark caramel eyes that had grown patient, far-sighted with his meanderings through the world.

“I just saw a baby salmon go by,” he told her. “I think. Smelt?”

“Smolt. You working this morning?”

“In a couple of hours. Thought I’d get my camera, try for a shot. What are you doing up so early?”

He had so many odd jobs, Carrie couldn’t keep track of his schedule: afternoon at the Food Co-op, driving an elderly woman around on her errands a couple of times a week, morning lifeguard duty at the city pool, night shifts at the ancient Pharaoh Theater. Years of swimming had given him a broad pair of shoulders and muscular legs which, at the moment, were hidden by flannel penguins waddling all over them.

“The crows woke me up,” she answered. “Then I couldn’t go back to sleep; the house was too quiet. My father finally stopped chanting, and now he’s vanished.”

He chuckled. “Yeah. I heard some of that, last night when I got home after the midnight show. What was he—”

“Haven’t a clue. He never tells me anything. Or he does, but he never makes sense. He’s probably asleep under a tree.”

“Maybe he’s got a girlfriend.”

“My dad?” she said, surprised at the notion. “I suppose maybe. But it’s hard to imagine who.”

“That’s because he’s your dad.”

Somehow, at the thought, they were both moving toward the weathered plank Zed had laid across the stream. He reached it first, balancing easily on his bare feet. Carrie was there at the bridge’s end to gather armfuls of frayed flannel, muscle, warm skin, to inhale the familiar scents of dreams and soap and sweat on the penguin pajamas.

“Come inside?” his lips said against her hair.

“I told Ella I’d come in early to help her hull strawberries and bake shortcakes.” Reluctantly, she peeled herself away from him. “I should go,” she told his eyes, which were heavy, full of her now instead of salmon and skunk cabbage.

“Tonight?” he said. “Wait. What’s today?”

“Saturday. I’ll be home late.”