Here So Far Away(44)

Francis came home as I was pulling on my boots. He’d cut off his curls again, which brought out the hardness in his face, made his expression that much more severe. “You’re still here,” he said.

Something about the way he said it suggested he’d put off returning until he was sure I was gone.

“I was just leaving. How’re you doing?”

“You should be going out with your friends, not spending all your time out in the boonies. You do have friends, don’t you? Know a few boys your own age?”

I felt as though I’d been slapped.

“Don’t worry about me,” I said, reaching around him to snatch my coat out of the closet. “I’m the most fuckable girl at school.”

It was stupid and it was juvenile and I didn’t stick around for him to tell me so.

A light, floating. A dingy in the night water.

I rubbed my eyes.

I was looking through a window, the lighthouse window. The dot of light was on the ridge above.

Slowly, I reoriented myself. I’d been so pissed when I left Francis, stomping to my car like a brat only to remember that I had nowhere to go. Not home, not before I had to, and Bill was out with Nat. So I went down to the lighthouse, turned on a reproduction oil lamp and brought it over to the desk, where there was an old black rotary phone with a too-short cord. I sat with my hand on the phone for a very long time.

Chances were, Lisa wouldn’t even take my call. But if she did, and we got through whatever needed getting through to set things right again, she might have something to say about how to deal with a hopeless crush. She might say the thing that would make Francis melt into a puddle of wax. What would that cost me? An apology? It’s not like I’d have to tell her everything.

“Bullshite,” I said aloud.

I fell asleep in the old rocking chair by the potbelly stove, and when I woke up, my hands had gone numb from sitting on them.

The floating light, was it Francis? Now that the sun set so early, I sometimes watched him from the lighthouse walking the fields with his flashlight. But this light on the hillside wasn’t bobbing along as usual; it was swirling, spinning.

I threw on my coat and ran outside.

I covered my eyes as the flashlight beam hit my face. Francis moved it off, and I blinked to readjust to the darkness. He was sitting on the ground, old meadow grass in his hair.

“Found the hooch,” he said, holding up a glass jar. “And a big rock found my foot.”

I didn’t laugh.

“I know Rupert couldn’t have done this without your help. What I want to know is, why would you help him run a still under my nose? Why would you put me in a position like that? Why would you do that again?”

“You decided to drink the evidence?”

“Well, you know, fuck it. Not going to make things worse, is it?”

“It’s not that I blame you for feeling sorry for yourself, but you don’t get to get drunk and yell at me about it.”

“Why, George?”

“Man, I dunno. We were just having some fun, and it was only one batch. I got rid of all the equipment afterward.”

“It’s good. Peachy. No wonder Rupert tore the house apart trying to find it.”

“What do you mean, tore the house apart?”

“He said he was looking for stamps, but the stamp drawer was full of them. Didn’t you know he used to have a real problem? Why do you think he used to make it himself?”

“Because he’s cheap?”

“More likely he didn’t want the boys at the liquor store to know how much he was going through. That’s why his wife left, you know.”

“His wife died.”

“She left with their daughter and then she died.”

No wonder it had been so easy to talk him into reviving the still. “Jesus. Did he drink the shine?”

“No, I poured it all out—at least, what I could find. Except this one. Poured out the rest of that whiskey we were drinking too.”

“Well, maybe you should go home and sleep it off.”

“I can’t sleep.”

Francis lay back in the grass. He flicked the flashlight off. On. Off. “You know what?” he said in the dark. “He told me to let go of him.”

“Who, Rupert?”

“The Come From Away. James. He said he was the stronger swimmer. And I could see her—I thought I could see her, in the water. But I was so scared. Seems I can be brave only when I don’t have to think about it.”

On. Off.

“That doesn’t make what you did any less—it makes it more heroic. What if you had listened to him and you couldn’t get to her? You could have all drowned.”

“I’m not handling this so well.”

“Who would?”

“Your father, for one. Hell, you’d handle it better than this.”

Leaving the flashlight on the ground, he got himself to his feet and staggered over and grasped me by the shoulders. Then he pushed me away, a bit roughly. “I think I hate this place, and everyone in it.”

“You like Rupert. And whoever this woman is you’re seeing.”

“She’s . . . It’s nothing. I like Rupert. And I like you. I really like you. And you’re a fucking teenager.”

“I get it, okay? I’m months away from being someone you feel comfortable having a conversation with.”