Envious Moon(13)

Inside the house I ate some of Berta’s soup and I was so exhausted I kissed her good night while the sun was still in the sky. I climbed into my bed and I slept soundly until I smelled bacon frying in the kitchen the next morning.

At noon, I met Victor at the jetty. The sheriff had been to see him, he told me, though over a week ago, and Victor had done his job. He told him we fished the shoals that night and the sheriff didn’t ask him anything else. Victor had not heard a word about it since. There was nothing in the papers anymore. I gave Victor half the money and he didn’t want it but I made him take it.

“Don’t do anything stupid,” I said. “Like get a motorcycle.”

The summer moved on. Long days after long days. In July I returned to the Grand Banks and it was another great trip, with fine weather and lots of fish. Both coming and going we steamed under the turret of the house and I looked up at the lawn when we went by, but I did not see anybody standing on it.

For a while, even, everything returned to normal. It was almost as if we had never gone into that house. As if we had stayed on the normal pathway of things the whole time.

Though I never stopped thinking about that night. In my bunk on the North Atlantic when the pitch and roll of the ocean denied me sleep, I returned again and again in my mind to the house. And when I studied what happened as best as I could, something curious happened. I stopped dwelling on the man and his fall. On the death that I was responsible for. Rather, I began to think only about the girl on the stairs. Hannah. To the extent that I considered her father trying to tackle me and then falling, I saw it almost as a separate event, as if it happened on another night. I suppose I knew that this was not right. And perhaps if I thought about it more, I might have realized that the ease with which I did it pointed to some larger flaw that rested within myself. Something that may have always been a part of me, but did not reveal itself until all this happened. And so it was that as I lay looking at the steel bottom of the bunk above me, it was the girl I was haunted by and it was the girl I wanted to haunt me. I dreamed about her. Once she was on the stairs and she screamed and when I said it would be okay I saw her face visibly relax. Another time it was dark and we lay together in a large bed. All I wanted to know was the color of her eyes. I begged her, let me turn on a light. But she shook her head no and kept inviting me to guess. I named every color I could think of, every color I had ever heard of or seen, but none of them were right.

I also began to see her in other places, when I was not sleeping. Times when I began to wonder if I had lost my mind. She would appear suddenly, out of nowhere, like an apparition. Once I saw her in the shiny black eye of a swordfish. The fish was alive. I had just gaffed it and Big Al and I were struggling to get it up on deck. Its eye was as small and dark as a marble, and when it caught my attention, I saw her in its reflective surface, staring back at me, her long hair streaming behind her. I must have completely stopped what I was doing. For in a moment I heard Big Al next to me and then I felt him, a swift punch delivered to my biceps with his free hand.

“Anthony,” he said. “What the f*ck? Get her up.”

From then on I tried my best to keep her at bay. I tried to think of her only in the deep of night when I was sure I was alone. When I could have her to myself. For the most part it worked. And I didn’t tell anyone about this, not even Victor.

One August morning I stood in front of the Lorrie Anne where it was berthed. Tomorrow we were to head out again. I was waiting on Carlos. A beautiful midsummer day and we were to spend the morning loading the hold with the squid, work I disliked more than all others. While I waited I stood and smoked and watched the boats around me. Small skiffs and dinghies heading out to larger boats. Trawlers being cleaned and loaded up. The day was warm and the sun moved in and out of high clouds. To my left, rising up above all the fishing boats, was the Cross Island ferry. It left every two hours year-round and we never paid it any attention. A sea bus, we used to call it. Though for some reason this time I was looking at its massive hull and I let my gaze drift up its decks. I drew on my cigarette and when my eyes reached the third level, what I saw almost stopped the heart in my chest.

It was her. Hannah Forbes. She was high above me and the sun was directly behind her head. The way the light shone over her made it impossible for me, once again, to make out her features. But a soft breeze blew her hair back and there was something about the way she stood that I knew with absolute certainty that it was her. You know how a parent can always recognize their child from a distance by how they walk? It was something like that, something intuitive, something I couldn’t put my finger on. I said her name out loud then, wanting to hear it roll off my tongue. Hannah. I could not see her face clearly. But I could tell by the way it was angled that she was looking above and beyond me, taking in the harbor, the skiffs and the fishing boats in front of her like toys. I dropped my cigarette and broke into a run.

I ran past Carlos on the wharf, and he said to me, “Whoa, Anthony, man, where you going?”

But all I did was nod and keep moving past him. When I reached the road, I turned toward the ferry terminal. I reached the parking lot and the boat was in front of me. It had left its moorings and was backing out and into the harbor. I scanned the top deck. There was a white-haired couple with sweaters tied around their neck. They waved to a young family next to me. But there was no sign of the girl. Though this time I knew I was no longer seeing things.