Darcey Steinke - Up Through the Water

Birdflower stood. “Any other words of wisdom you'd like to lay on me before I go.”

Creepy Dracula music played and John Berry threw back his head like a crazy person. “She'll leave you, too,” he said. “You fucking guru.”

* * *

Alone on the road Birdflower counted his ribs carefully like a child doing scales. Headlights flashed in a parade of beach jeeps and trucks heading to the bar. He stuck his hands deep in his pockets and walked barefoot in the loose sand at the side of the road. He lost his balance and fell. Sharp gravel pushed into his palms and his knees grated against the asphalt. Standing, he brushed his hands and ran barefoot toward the restaurant.

Hidden by the low cedars near the storage shed, he watched her. The bright lights of the kitchen showed her arm ladling soup. He saw her face muted behind the screen's haze.

Nothing was wrong. Safe in the kitchen, she was working for Neal, who had an old boyfriend here for the weekend. She was even dressed in the cutoffs he had left wedged down in the covers of her bed. Birdflower lit a cigarette. They were going together to Norfolk in a few days. Things would settle. She was with him, not John Berry, who was just an ignorant old island boy way out of his league.

It was obvious to Birdflower that she didn't want John Berry, that her fascination with the backward lives of the islanders was over. Though he hadn't known her long, Birdflower convinced himself that they had similar desires, and that he was better suited for her because he understood free love.

Gnats circled his head: she would stay with him. Birdflower watched her put onions in an unseen frying pan — heard the snap and sizzle and imagined the blue gas flame. Moving back into the shadows, he watched her step out and head for the walk-in. Behind the veil of cold smoke she chose things. When she came out she gazed at the night sky. Birdflower looked up with her at a star showing through moving clouds.

“Just once,” John Berry said, pressing a hand on the wheel.

“No way,” Tom said.

“I won't get out of the car. I'll just see if any lights are on.”

Tom looked at him.

“Come on,” he said. “I'm begging you.”

“You'll come to my house then? Susan will fix up the couch.”

“Yep,” John Berry said, sipping the beer he'd snuck out of Paolo's under his shirt.

Tom shifted down and rounded the corner, then down once more as the car pumped onto the sandy street. They passed the two-trunked maple tree and the dilapidated shack where John Berry knew the island kids smoked dope. The other houses leading to Emily's were dark.

“Turn off the lights,” John Berry said as he hunkered down. His wobbly finger pointed through the glass. “Her cottage is there.”

“Nobody's home,” Tom said. “I didn't drive down here to chauffeur you around.”

“Shut up,” John Berry said, watching the sneakers, crab nets, and clam racks, sprawled all over her front porch. A sudden glow came on from inside the bedroom. “She's lit a candle,” he whispered.

Tom moved the car forward, its tires muffled in the sand. Neither spoke till the car was speeding up the island highway, a splinter of moon above. “They're lemon-scented,” John Berry said as he watched the waves beat against the sand.

W e're outta here,” Birdflower said, his hands on the wheel. “This island doesn't bother me in the winter, but when the tourists start coming out of the woodwork. .” He shook his head and noticed the tall birds wading in Sugar Creek to their left. Wind sprayed from window to window. Emily watched the town end of the island fade till it was only a few slanted roofs and the top half of the lighthouse. Not since she borrowed John Berry's truck to pick up Eddie in Norfolk had she been off the island. She had been late and he was standing outside, his duffel bag by his feet, leaning against a phone booth. His voice high and breathless, “I thought you'd forgotten me,” he said.

Birdflower zoomed the tape deck fast forward to a whiny finish. He lit a cigarette and plugged the lighter back in. “What if he's on here?”

“He won't be,” she said, her fingertips tracing a seagull-shaped scar at her temple. “Nothing will happen.” Her eyes were focused on the back of the car in front of them, packed so tightly with clothing that a few boxes of cereal and crackers seemed to float up to the glass.

Emily sat in a back booth — a famous landmark map of North Carolina above her head. Birdflower watched her from his spot in line. Fluorescent lights made her skin look olive and patchy. She didn't take the mainland well. Two bare-chested boys in shorts danced near her with a helium balloon. They held it down, then let it go, laughing each time it floated back up. At a table close by, a surfer snuggled with his remarkably pale girlfriend.

Behind the counter a girl bagged burgers. In front of Birdflower was a man and his little girl in a blue bathing suit with a flounced skirt. The cashier pushed his tray forward and the child followed like a duck.

Emily caught his eye, smiled, waved.

Birdflower smiled back, then turned to order. On the ferry trip she'd kept her eyes on the empty cans and paper on the van's floor. She'd shifted in her seat and pinched the skin on her thigh. He'd tried to calm her, offered her weed, played the slow ballads on all his tapes, and finally asked her about being pregnant. It was then that she settled herself and talked quietly about sensations, moods, and how her hair had changed from yellow-white to a tone like goldenrod.

Birdflower listened, but he was preoccupied. He'd seen the ferrymen glare at the van and talk among themselves. He'd watched her and thought how important it was she stay with him. He was worried because he knew styles of men changed with the times. For a while he had been in fashion, sensitive, intuitive; but now women wanted other qualities, discipline, sternness, and money. On the mainland, his situation had been dismal, and that was why Emily seemed so crucial — she didn't seem to care that he'd gone completely out of style.

“This is so weird,” Emily said when he'd sat down. “All these people so close to you.”

“Seems a little barbaric,” Birdflower said. He unwrapped his burger.

“But you miss it,” Emily said. “I mean, these skinny french fries, and who could make a burger like this?” She held up her bun — mustard and ketchup mixed like an ink blot. “Like you could eat one of these anywhere.”

“Comfort in that?” Birdflower asked.

“Kind of,” Emily said, squirting a ketchup pack all over her fries.

The clerk handed him the aqua key ring. “We've tracked people down as far as Texas for stealing stuff. You can have the Bible. But the rest is ours.”

Emily walked out of the motel's office and up the curling cement stairs. On the second floor, Birdflower slipped an arm around her waist. His eyelids looked heavy.

At the first convenience store after the McDonald's — which they had not stopped at but still somehow seemed a marker for him — Birdflower had pulled a rolled plastic bag from under the seat. He puffed, spoke in a held-breath voice, and let the smoke blow against the glass. He turned up his tapes, and again and again raced the reverse to familiar guitar riffs. It wasn't that she didn't like getting high, she appreciated the easing, the slight numbing sensation, the way time lost parameters, and how touching became central and diaphanous as air. But she didn't think Birdflower should smoke so much and he'd gotten so stoned on the trip she'd felt like the only sober one at a drunken high school party.

Her thonged sandal sucked cement. “Why so fast, baby?” Bird, flower said, grabbing her arm. He looked like a retarded man: same slow eyes she'd seen once on a man watching girls pass on the beach.