Pulling up to Indian Wells for the afternoon haul, Ben saw Donny’s truck in the sand by the water, but instead of joining him, sat there in the parking lot watching the incoming waves. Small but resolute, they churned toward shore, one after another, their crests peeling back in the wind like the teeth of spinning saw blades.
Ben’s father had been the head of the haul-seining crew until he’d died three years ago and Ben’s older brother by four years, Donny, had come home from Nova Scotia where he’d gone in search of better fishing after high school. Their mother lived nearby with a guy who’d quit haul seining and opened up a deli that had expanded each of the past three years, and now included a small restaurant and catering service.
Ben watched the figures of his brother and their helper get out of the truck and slide the dory from the trailer into the mild surf, figured they could manage fine without the gas he’d picked up, and headed back to Lazy Point.
That night at the deli his mother, after marrying the owner, now half-owned, Ben saw his girlfriend, or ex-girlfriend, he wasn’t sure, Cindy, sitting with Donny’s girl. The day before they’d gone to the Episcopal church’s annual Chowder Festival and Ben, appalled at Cindy’s flirtatious behavior, had driven her home in silence. Now, when she joined him in a booth, they ordered their usual plate of French fries, which grew cold as they picked at it. As if to make some kind of point, Cindy told him his mother had offered her a job at the deli.
“Go ahead, take it,” Ben said, “but it’s a bullshit job. Serving tourists, people who don’t give a damn.”
“I suppose I should haul seine,” Cindy said. “How many of you are there left, three? Now there’s a smart career choice.”
Though he knew fishing was a dead-end, Ben felt a loyalty to his father, and to something else too, something vague and unsettled in the pit of his stomach.
His most vivid memory of his father was of a day when Ben had missed the afternoon haul and come home to find the old man unloading the nets by himself. Although Ben had just turned sixteen and quit high school to fish full-time, he’d also just met Cindy and on this day had skipped the afternoon haul so the two of them could take advantage of her empty house.
Driving up the street at dusk, Ben had seen the old man unloading the truck, and felt himself driving into a scene that suddenly seemed quaint, passé. He stopped on his way in to grab an armful of net.
“I can handle it,” his father said, not looking at him. But Ben continued until the old man yanked the net from his hands and dumped it back in the truck. Excited by the quick movement, their black Labrador, Guts, danced over and began barking.
“Jesus Christ,” Ben mumbled, “you ain’t got to kill yourself just to prove a point.”
His father pointed a thick finger at Ben’s chin. “Then don’t come strolling in here at sundown and lay your clean hands on my nets.” His raised voice sent Guts into another spasm of tail-wagging and barking.
“Maybe I got something better to do,” Ben said, and as he turned to the house, Guts jumped at him playfully, Ben fending him off with a forearm, the dog returning to earth and springing in the same motion toward Ben’s father. Leaning into the truck for more net, the old man felt the dog’s paws on his hip and wheeled around in a fury, meeting the dog’s jaw with his fist and knocking it unconscious to the ground.
Waiting for his hamburger, Ben caught Cindy’s eye and, feeling a surge of forgiveness, nodded and said, “What’s up, girl?” But the words came out glib, uncaring.
“Nothing,” Cindy said. She stood up and returned to Donny’s girlfriend’s booth.
Donny strolled into the deli, still wearing his knee-high rubber boots. He took a look around the restaurant, spotted the girls, and squeezed in opposite Ben.
“Where were you?” Donny said.
“Nowhere,” Ben said. “Anything running?”
“You talk to Cindy?” Donny said.
“Nah,” Ben said. “Any bass?”
“Where the hell were you?” Donny asked again.
“Nowhere,” Ben said.
Donny huffed and took another look over at the two women. “Guess I better check in,” he said. Donny stood up and, dragging the heavy boots, walked over to Cindy and Joy, exchanged a few words, and walked back.
“Told her you and me need to get a beer,” Donny said.
The two brothers bought a six-pack from the retail side of the store and took Ben’s truck out to the beach, Donny pushing in the CD already in the player.
The nearest beach was Two Mile Hollow, also known as Queer’s Beach, usually deserted in the off-season. The two sat idling in the empty parking lot, sipping their beers and peering ahead to where the truck’s lights shone into the blackness. Side one finished and side two began.
“What part of Canada was it again, the place you lived?” Ben said.
“Nova Scotia,” Donny said.
“Some kind of farm,” Ben said.
“There were eight of us and a couple acres of crops,” Donny said. “But it was near enough to the ocean so’s I could still fish.”
“And you were screwing some married chick.”
“Two of ‘em,” Donny said with a sigh, lowering himself into the seat. “One from Maine, the other from Ohio. Hell, they’re the only two I’ve been with besides Joy.”
“Damn,” Ben said.
“Then one of em’s husband inherited a bunch of money and they all moved back. I stayed up there fishing till Mom called and said Dad died.”
After the last song on side two, side one began again, Donny slipping into a slumber, Ben still sitting upright, staring into the night.
“Canada,” Ben said, glancing at Donny’s unhearing form and shaking his head. “How do you just move to Canada?”
Two days after punching the dog, the old man had for the first time in Ben’s memory stayed home in bed. When Ben and Guts—after being knocked out the dog had been skittish with anyone other than Ben—came home after the afternoon haul, Ben had found his mother moving about the kitchen oddly jittery, too preoccupied to greet him or ask about the fishing. Ben walked down the hall to his father’s room and looked in, finding it empty, bed made.
“Where’s Pop?” he asked, returning to the kitchen. But his mother didn’t answer, just nervously ushered Ben to the single setting at the table and served him dinner.
Afterward, Ben took Guts for a drive, but unable to shake the image of his parents’ empty, tidy bedroom, turned back and confronted his mother, who, without lifting her head from the sinkful of dishes, told him his father had died that morning of a heart attack. She hadn’t told him when he came in, she explained, because she didn’t want him to hear the news on an empty stomach, and by the end of the month, still jittery, peripatetic, she’d moved in with the guy that until a year earlier ran the only other remaining haul-seining crew besides his father’s, and who now owned the deli.
“Ben,” Donny said sleepily, rolling his head on the seat-back toward his brother, “if you’re on the crew, you got to be there both hauls, morning and afternoon. Dory ran out of gas today—we had to row in.”
But behind Donny, a surge of light from an approaching car caught Ben’s attention.
“It’s November,” Ben said, “Goddam season’s over.”
“Not no more it ain’t,” Donny said, rolling his head back the other way to see. “Nowadays they’re out here till Christmas.”
“But what the hell for?” Ben said. He peered past Donny to where the car, dark-colored with dark windows, had pulled up a couple of spaces over.
Ben got out of the truck and passed through the headlights on his way to the car. Donny watched as he rapped a knuckle against the window, which descended an inch or so, and a minute later Ben returned to the truck.
“I asked him what he was looking for,” Ben said, “and he just goes, ‘Nothing, I couldn’t sleep.'” Ben stared at Donny for an explanation, shook his head, and opened another beer. “Get me out of here,” he said.
They drove back through the village, found the deli closed, and continued on past the horse farms, which opened out beneath the night, then on to Springs, turning at a fork toward Cindy’s.
“Just to see if she’s home,” Ben said, chugging the rest of his beer and flipping the can behind his seat where it rattled against the others. They pulled over before a split-level ranch, the windows dark but the house faintly lit by a streetlight.
“Probably at Joy’s,” Donny said.
“Nah,” Ben said, “she went to bed.”
Donny had always been struck by Ben’s prescience. While he himself focused on the business at hand, figuring things out as he went, Ben seemed to know things in advance, things for which, as far as Donny could tell, there hadn’t been any indication.
Ben walked up the driveway, the streetlamp casting a dark shadow at his side, stepped onto the porch and thumped the door with the heel of his hand.
After a full minute of silence, a light went on inside and the door opened, Cindy stepping onto the porch wrapped in an oversized parka, legs bare.
“We were just driving by,” Ben said. “Thought maybe you’d come have a beer.”
“I already went to bed,” Cindy said. She shook her head in frustration and stepped back up onto the door sill, where she peered back at Ben. “What is it with you?” she said.
“Ain’t nothin’ with me,” Ben said. He shrugged and glanced back at the truck. Cindy swung the door closed.
“Gotta get her beauty sleep, huh?” Donny said as Ben accelerated down the lane.
“Shit,” Ben said, “I ain’t hardly slept all week.”
“And you’re some beautiful, too,” Donny said.
“Compared to the rest of the Brister men, I’m a freakin’ cherub.”
“A what?”
“Like they got on the windows at St. Anne’s.”
“What do you know about St. Anne’s?”
“Plenty,” Ben said.
A few days after his father’s funeral, Donny still in Canada, Ben had gone back to the Episcopal church and found the priest, a young guy with hair long enough to tuck behind his ears, watching a football game in the rectory out back. The priest remembered Ben from the service, introduced himself as Jack, and invited Ben in. He flipped off the television and offered Ben a beer, which Ben declined.
“So what’s up?” Jack asked, settling himself into a sofa.
“I want to know if my father dying means there’s some kind of score that needs to be settled.”
“Score?” Jack asked.
“Like do I need to make amends?”
“I don’t know,” Jack said, “you got any unfinished business with him?”
“I’m just asking,” Ben said, “what’s the normal procedure.”
“If you’re feeling some guilt,” the priest said, “it’d be normal to ask for forgiveness.”
“Why would I feel guilt?” Ben said.
“When you lose someone,” Jack said, “it’s common to wish you’d done some things differently.”
“What are you trying to say?” Ben said.
At this point the priest stood up, walked into the next room, and returned with two beers, handing one to Ben. “Take it,” he said, “you’re not on trial here.”
As Ben sipped his beer, Jack told him in surprisingly blunt language about his own father back in Oregon, how the hostility between them had steadily grown until one night Jack found himself pacing outside his father’s bedroom with clenched fists.
Jack took a long pull on his beer.
“Here I was,” he said, “ready to challenge him to a fight, when all of a sudden it came to me: This isn’t about him—it’s about me. A week later I entered the seminary.”
“So you’re saying I should start going to church,” Ben said.
“I’m saying it’s how you look at it. It might seem real dark where you’re looking but off to the side there’s a faint light flickering somewhere. You just have to look.”
Ben sat there trying to make sense of the metaphor, searching the past week for a flickering light. But no matter what he recalled—the long morning drives during which he’d tried to summon grief for his departed father, the idle afternoons spent lying with Cindy gazing out her bedroom window—all he found was a dull half-light, the landscape shadowless beneath an ashen sky.
Ben and Donny stopped for another six-pack and returned to Two Mile Hollow, this time shutting the lights. They weren’t there ten minutes when the same car pulled up beside them, shining its lights out over the ocean.
“The insomniac,” Ben said.
“Looking for love,” Donny mumbled.
“He ain’t finding it in my asshole,” Ben said.
“Not real love,” Donny said.
“Fuck you.”
“You know, if you think about it,” Donny said, “these guys might be on to something. I mean, imagine chasing girls just as horny as you. They’d chase you right back.”
“You don’t get nothing for free,” Ben said.
“Maybe you don’t,” Donny said, and his voice softened as he thought back to Canada, “but there’s times when everything just falls into place and you get your pick of pleasures.”
“You can run off somewhere and think you do,” Ben said, “but there’s always a price.”
“That St. Anne’s talking?” Donny said.
“It’s me talking,” Ben said. “St. Anne’s ain’t nothing but a bunch of shit about flickering lights.”
“Let me tell you, I’d a married that chick from Ohio. The other one wasn’t bad, but the Ohio chick used to come to my room and fucking dance for me.” Donny shook his head, gazing out before him. “I’d lie there watching till I couldn’t take it anymore and she’d just pull her clothes off and climb in bed.”
“She was married already,” Ben said.
“I’m saying if she was single I’d a married her.”
“Right, and then she’d a been dancing in somebody else’s room.”
“You don’t know that,” Donny said.
“I’m just saying what difference does it make. Now that it’s gone, what difference does it make what it was?”
“A lot of difference,” Donny said. “Cause I know it’s out there.”
“That ain’t what’s out there.”
Donny released a long stream of air and Ben, looking back to the car at their side, its headlights pushing vainly against the darkness, popped out the CD and opened his door.
“Come on,” he said, “this guy’s starting to get on my nerves.”
Donny watched Ben climb out, then followed, not trusting him on his own. As they reached the driver’s window, it lowered to about half open, and they saw a smooth round face that looked oddly young beneath a receding hairline.
“Guess you ain’t got to sleep yet,” Ben said.
“No,” the man said. “I’m not used to the quiet.”
“You from the city?” Ben said.
“Guilty as charged,” the man said. “You guys must live out here.”
“Born and raised,” Ben said.
“You’re lucky to live in such a beautiful place,” the man said.
Ben and Donny stood a moment in silence, Ben straightening and peering off at the ocean, then leaning back to the window.
“Listen,” Ben said, “me and my brother here are headed down to the water if you care to join us.”
Without a moment’s hesitation, the window went up, lights and motor shut off, and Ben raised his eyebrows at Donny as the man slid out of the car. He was short and wore a turtleneck and fleece vest.
“I’ve just been driving around,” he said, clapping his hands against the chill.
Ben led them into the soft sand and down toward the water, Donny in his boots taking up the rear. Moving out from the dim light of the parking lot, Ben walked nearly to the water and turned back to the stranger.
“I got a question for you,” Ben said.
The man came to a stop.
“Give me one reason I shouldn’t beat the shit out of you right now,” Ben said.
The man was quiet a moment before answering. “Because I didn’t do anything to you,” he said.
Ben stepped forward and grabbed the man’s vest in both hands. He pulled him close, their noses nearly touching, then jerked him sideways and down to the ground where he landed on his knees and stayed put.
“Come on,” Donny said, grabbing Ben’s arm, “this ain’t gonna solve nothing.”
“Just by being here,” Ben said to the man, “you’re doing something to me.”
“Let’s go,” Donny said, pulling Ben away.
“You hear me?” Ben said. “Just by being here.” And he yielded to Donny’s hand on his arm, and the two of them walked back to the truck.
They climbed in the cab and Donny reached over and switched the ignition to accessory, playing the CD at low volume, the faint guitar chords seeming to drift in from somewhere out in the night.
They heard the door to the car open and saw the man slide in behind the wheel, start the car, and drive off.
“This is the place everybody wants to be,” Donny mused. “I’ll bet you even that chick from Ohio comes here at some point.”
“To find you?” Ben said.
“Maybe,” Donny said. “Or maybe just to come here.”
“But what the fuck for?” Ben asked.
“Cause it’s beautiful, and not crowded.”
“Everybody can’t come to a place and it not be crowded.”
“They’re not all here yet,” Donny said.
“And once they are, then what?” Ben said.
“They start going to another place,” Donny said.
“That’s not what they do,” Ben said.
Before driving Cindy home from the Chowder Festival the day before, Ben had felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to see the priest, Jack. He’d been standing on the line for the clam chowder made by a new bistro in the village, Ben buying it because he was hungry, not curious, and because Cindy didn’t want to leave.
The feel of Jack’s hand had felt immodest, as if they’d never had their disagreement in the rectory. It occurred to Ben that Jack might be gay, a person who simply skipped over the normal obstacles.
“Everybody doing okay?” Jack had asked, looking into Ben’s eyes as if he actually wanted to know, despite having lived in the town for less than a year.
“Everybody’s fine,” Ben said, stepping back enough for Jack to withdraw his hand. “Now we’re just one less,” Ben said.
“Grief follows its own schedule,” Jack said.
Ben ordered his chowder and before he could pay, Jack told the server he would take one too, and that Ben’s chowder was on the church.
“This isn’t even for me,” Ben said, “it’s for my girlfriend,” which of course was untrue, Ben the hungry one, yet perhaps true in the sense that it was because of her, for her, that he was at the fair in the first place.
“Tell her I hope she likes it,” Jack said, and again Ben was disturbed by the presumption, the way Jack had gone along with the lie, with the strain of what he’d said that was not true, never sensing the strain that was.
Then Ben had returned to Cindy and mentioned to her that the priest had bought the chowder, expecting her to confirm the banality of the gesture. Instead, she made Ben take her over to be introduced, whereupon she had made small talk and offered a flirtatious smile that made Ben realize the priest wasn’t gay at all, simply charming.
He had driven Cindy back to her house in silence, Cindy asking once what was wrong but Ben unable to look at her, unable to speak.
Ben drove Donny from Two Mile Hollow back to his pickup truck at the deli, assured him he’d be there for the morning haul, then instead of heading out to the house on Lazy Point, turned back to East Hampton and made a final circuit through the empty town.
He drove past the pond, then the church, light from the rectory in back silhouetting its tall steeple against the night sky. Entering the village, dimly lit by the streetlamps, Ben gazed at the row of boutiques on either side, the rooflines of the connected buildings the same as when he had been a kid.
Everything had changed, but you could never tell by looking. You had to know.
