Michael Christie - If I Fall, If I Die

“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.