Darcey Steinke - Up Through the Water

“You're late,” Lila yelled up from the dock. He heard a cling-clang crawling sound and saw a pail of crabs. In her hands was the white cord she teased them with. Over the edge he saw crabs clawing on a barnacled dock post. The dock smelled of charcoal, a lazy banjo tune tinkled from a sailboat anchored in the inlet, and a cluster of tourists in lawn chairs were settled near their rocking boats. They drank gin from mismatched glasses and talked sleepily among themselves. “I almost got one,” Lila said, hand over long-fingered hand, pulling the string up. “It's a baby,” she said. She wriggled the line and let it drop.

“Ready?” Eddie said. The banjo notes drifted over the water. The crabs crawled over each other to get out. He wanted to be home where the beers were on ice. He'd made his bed and selected a few tapes, piling all his laundry discreetly in the closet.

“I knew a boy off one of these boats,” she said. “He was going to play the clarinet in a circus band. He had this tune he was thinking would be perfect for the elephant routine. And another one for the poodles.”

“I saw a circus,” Eddie said, picking up the pail and leading her away. “This lady in a sparkly bikini did tricks on a high bar. No safety net or anything. It was like she'd jump right into your lap. The program said she was afraid of city traffic.” He slipped an arm around her waist. “Isn't that weird?”

“Yeah,” Lila said. “It's like my father. He's out in the ocean with his pound nets every day but he can hardly swim.” She matched her body to his stride. The lighthouse shone like a candle on the trees of the wild side of the island.

Eddie asked if she had the keys. Lila nodded. “I almost snagged the ones for my father's truck, too.”

“That would've been great.”

“Yeah,” Lila said, “but he keeps them with him most of the time.” She stopped and looked carefully at him. “Don't think anything is going to happen.” She put her hand into his jeans pocket.

Eddie heard a crab scratch. He heard his heart like a tom-tom in his head and he felt her pulse through her fingers.

“I've had beer before,” Lila said as they sat on his bed popping two of the assorted brands, some green bottles with fancy labels, a few cans, all sneaked from the restaurant. They leaned against the wall of his bedroom, light only from the tape deck. He gulped his beer, embarrassed by the purple beads his mother had strung across the doorway and pulled to one side with a shoelace. The room was paneled gray barn color with a matching twin bed and dresser wedged in and had a view of the porch chair swing moving slightly through sheer curtains.

“I drank a six once. Threw up for three days,” Lila said. Her dice earrings rocked. Eddie put his hand on her knee.

The crabs they'd put on the stove earlier plopped and tangled in the big kitchen pot.

“Why?” Eddie asked, eyeing the racing magazines in piles by the bed and remembering the one smuggled Playboy down near the bottom.

“I was bored,” Lila said. “It was at a bonfire on the beach. Everybody else was either passed out, or making out.”

Eddie got a tall brown bottle. “Dark's stronger,” he said, putting his hand back on her knee and thinking of the scars there, a design like fishhooks and question marks. Like an instrument in its velvet cradle, the small dark room seemed to fit them perfectly. She leaned onto his shoulder and Eddie felt little mad-scientist currents between them. As in the movies he kissed her full on the mouth, then moved an unsure hand to her. There was worry that if it came down to it, he wouldn't know what to do, he would be awkward, and the chance to make love to Lila would crackle and evaporate. His mind ran with scattered bits friends had told him and information he had gotten from other girls.

Lila whispered, “What's that noise?”

Eddie heard crabs, crabs bailing out, a quick claw over the edge and then one by one each hurling its weight over. “Water's not hot enough,” he said.

“They'll get all over your house.” Lila giggled. “Like little trolls.”

“I like it,” Eddie said, pulling her to him and trying to roll them horizontal on the sandy sheets. Crabs continued to jump like paratroopers. Lila's body felt as fragile as the swans glassblowers form. A breeze that smelled of leaves goose-pimpled his legs and blew the curtains inward. He heard drunken voices singing up the road. A man said something about warm water. “That's my mother,” Eddie said and sat up.

Emily sang: “How does it feel?” And the man joined in, “To be on your own—”

“That's Birdflower,” Lila said. “What's he doing with her?”

“How am I supposed to know? Maybe they're drunk from the boat,” Eddie said. “Let's go.” He got up and pulled her hand. “Come on.”

“I thought you said your mother was taking a break.”

“Lila, let's go.” Eddie saw his mother up the road under the moon. With her skirt held up she kicked her legs.

They left with a bang of the kitchen door, running fast in the moonlight along the sand road. Eddie slowed only when he could no longer make out the words of his mother's song.

“This is the oldest operating lighthouse on the east coast,” Lila said, fingers pinching her nose, putting on her tour guide voice. The key clicked in the lock and the door opened. Eddie stepped behind her into the complete roundness of the lighthouse. He looked up the spiral stairs to the latchdoor with light around the cracks, as if the sun was on the other side. Their feet made metallic sounds on the stairs. “Around three times,” Lila said, taking Eddie's hand. “For luck.”

He watched her climb the stairs to the light. When Lila turned, her eyes flicked red like dogs in photographs. “We would be dead if we fell,” she said.

Eddie caught his breath.

“What's with you?”

“Nothing,” Eddie said.

“My grandmother said one keeper fell and that he deserved it because he was drunk.”

Eddie dragged a hand on the cool wall. “Did he break his legs?”

“Both legs were folded under like a doll's,” Lila said and pushed the wooden door open.

They climbed into a round room with windows. Three giant bulbs in cone-shaped silver reflectors elevated in the middle spun and flashed. “Like a spaceship, I always think,” Lila said as she walked to the side with the view of the Atlantic. Eddie thought of sea captains in heavy wool coats with velvet collars looking up to the light on shore. Maybe in a split second, this one captain in his boat, at the wheel near Bermuda or farther, would see Lila and him leaning against each other by the window. Eddie looked down to the jagged shoreline, rocks below thinning threads of water.

Lila broke from him. “Look at the island,” she said, and walked barefoot to the other side. The view flashed of white cottages, small sailboats, a few motels, the community store, the bar, and even the beginnings of the beach — a hint of motion on the far side.

“It's like it's play from up here,” she said. “I think the lighthouse keepers were really afraid of water. I think they came up here, not really looking to the water for ships in trouble, but instead standing and looking over the island trying to see their wife's tiny hands in the kitchen window drying a dinner plate.”

Eddie wanted to say something. The wind keened around the lighthouse. Quickly he spidered his fingers up Lila's back and felt for the hook of her bra. It came undone easily, slackened, and fell lazily. Light pulsed on their mouths pressed like kissing fish. He and Lila kneeled together on the floor like children, then fell under the beams of strong light flashing above them and out over the sea for miles.