Adam Haslett - Imagine Me Gone

Brother Sun, Sister Moon, Michael said, and I agreed. Alec said he didn’t like that game, but Michael and I started searching for the right little nook or cave in the rocks, and Alec came after us, saying we should look for crabs instead. We found a good spot with a flat bottom and a little overhang from a bigger slab of rock above it. It was shaded, almost like a real cave. Okay, get in there, Michael said to Alec, who complied, sitting cross-legged and fidgeting with the stones he’d picked up. Who am I? Alec asked. You’re a monk, Michael said. This is where you live. Who are you guys? That doesn’t matter. You don’t know us yet. What am I supposed to do? Alec said. You live here, you little fidget-buster, Michael said, squeezing Alec’s arm. You live here and think about the sea. Alec said, I don’t want to. Tough, I said. Why do I always have to stay in the cave? Alec said. Because you’re the monk, Michael said. We have to find you. Just stay there and don’t look what direction we’re going, okay? Shut your eyes. Alec closed his eyes and Michael and I ran across the smooth rock up along the tree line, going on like that for a while until we were well out of view of where we’d left Alec. The waves were bigger here and the water was loud, slapping against the rocks, then rushing off them as the waves drained back into the sea, showing all the seaweed and barnacles on the sides of the boulders, which disappeared again when the throat of the next wave rose up and covered them. It was getting later in the day but the sun was still in the sky.

Look, I said. Down on a broad rock just above the spray line to our right three seals were basking. They look dead, Michael said. They’re not dead, they’re sleeping. We climbed diagonally down toward them. Not too close, I said, they’ll wake up and go back in the water. Their skins were gray and brown and green and a little bluish too, all the colors mottled together, and they had huge dirty white whiskers and snouts that were wet like Kelsey’s. The biggest one was huffing and snoring. Do you see the blubber on that thing? Michael practically shouted. We could harpoon it and harvest its body fat for fuel, that blubber whale! His voice said he wanted to squeeze it like he squeezed Alec’s arm, squeezing the fat till it almost hurt.

I think they are protozoan, he said. What does that mean? Very old. Ancient. They were here before humans, living off their own blubber. Michael liked that word, blubber . He said it all the time, even if there was nothing blubberish around. We squatted down and watched them. Every few minutes one of the seals would raise its head, look over its shoulder at us, and then lay its head back on the rock. Eventually the middle one started rubbing its snout against its flank.

Do you think we’ll be late for supper? Michael asked. Maybe, I said. How long have we been here? he asked. A few minutes, I said. No, on the island. I don’t know, I said. Do you think we have a week left? he asked. I don’t know. Do you think we have ten days? Maybe.

He asked questions like this a lot but I usually didn’t answer because I didn’t really get them. It was just Michael saying stuff, asking things Mom ignored too, but that sometimes he convinced Dad to answer, which he’d do by asking more questions of Michael.

A harpoon would wake those puppies up, he said when I didn’t answer. Alec would have laughed and squealed at that, egging Michael on, but I didn’t. Michael stood up and walked in an arc around to the other side of the seals, keeping his distance. A minute later I followed him and we squatted down again, this time in the shade. A big wave doused the heads of the seals and they jostled themselves back from the wetness like big lazy dogs with no legs.

Mom and Dad are going to argue tonight, he said. How do you know? I just do, he said. Mom’s going to get angry at him. She always gets angry at him, I said. No she doesn’t, that’s not true, he said. Yes it is. She gets angry at him after we go to bed. Not every night, he said, she doesn’t do it every night. Besides, all couples have arguments. Mom told you that, I said. All couples have arguments . Mom told you that. So what? he said, that doesn’t make it not true.

Down the shoreline from where we’d come there were black cormorants on a wet rock. Some stood perfectly still with their necks folded back. Two had their big wings wide open drying in the sun, which made them look a little scary, like giant bats. None of them seemed to notice any of the others, like each bird was the only one on the rock. Out a ways seagulls flew in big circles above a lobster boat headed back toward the harbor. I still didn’t understand how they could stay up in the air that long without resting.

Michael tossed a pebble onto the tail of one of the seals but it didn’t notice. Don’t, I said. He lobbed another that landed on the biggest one’s back but it didn’t react either.

Don’t!

They’d heat Cleveland for a week in January! he exclaimed. He said that kind of thing all the time to his one friend, Ralph, our babysitter’s younger brother, and Ralph made strange noises and piled on more, like, They’d heat Nova Scotia for a year! and they’d keep going like that. Alec tried to join in but he didn’t understand how it worked so he was never funny. I understood, but they didn’t like playing with a girl. Stop it, I said, and he threw the rest of his pebbles away down toward the water.

What did you do in the boat? he said. Dad made us pretend he wasn’t there, I said. Michael had started taking small shells out of a tidal pool in the rock, drying them on his shirt, and arranging them in a straight line at his feet. I picked some up and added onto the line until it stretched in front of me too. Do you think it’s three weeks before we go back to school or a month? I don’t know, I said, why? I just want to know, he said. Once the line stretched a few feet on either side of us, he started removing shells until it looked like a white chain with missing links. A fine spray in the wind was making my face damp. I’m hungry, I said, let’s go have supper. The seals had backed themselves onto all dry rock again and weren’t moving at all, not even their heads.

Michael didn’t want to return to school, that’s why he was asking about it. Ralph was his only friend. Usually he didn’t get upset until a few days before we started, not this early, when we were still on the island.

He stood up and looking down at the seals said, Protozoan mammals beached like giant, animate pork loin. Then he started back along the rocks up by the trees and I followed him.

I hate you guys, Alec said when we reached the cave again. But we found you, Michael said. That’s how the game ends. You’re Saint Francis of Assisi praying here until your palms bleed. I don’t get it, he whined. Who are you? I’m Saint Francis as a younger man, Michael said, and Celia is his friend Clare, who cares for lepers. I hate you, Alec said, standing up and running out over the rocks ahead of us.

I knew Michael had to be right about the argument that would come later because Mom didn’t say anything about us being gone or even ask where we’d been. In the kitchen, Dad had the extra cheerfulness he got with us when Mom was angry at him. He let us each drop a lobster in the boiling water. He had to hold Alec so he’d be high enough not to get his hand splashed. Their black antennae whipped back and forth against the sides of the pot before disappearing.

Mom told us to clear the saucepans with crabs in them off the dining room table, and we put them on the floor by the door to the porch, a whole collection, fifteen or twenty, different sizes and colors. They were all alive and seemed happy enough. Kelsey sniffed at them but didn’t like the way they moved.