Float Read online

  Well, weren’t they all?

  At the end of the ratway, a stone arch spanned the house and the wall, and he had to duck to get out from under it. It wasn’t until he stood up straight in the open expanse of the backyard that he realized he’d been holding his breath. He felt dizzy as he looked around. It was getting late, but the sky was blue, and a rising sea breeze moved through the branches, flickering the sunlight in yellows and greens. The season was changing, and it was change at its most beautiful—unlike his life, which was change at its lowest ebb. Keeping to the edge of the yard, he passed the grotto made by his Great-Aunt Hilda in her youth, where she had pressed seashells, fish bones, and seaweed into concrete, creating a fossilized ocean cave, complete with hidden piping that dripped water from cement stalactites. He paused at the still, black pool full of pine needles, where insects made ripples and clouds of gnats hovered over the water. Off to the side sat a streaked verdigris marine monster with a scaled tail, webbed toes, and a somewhat human head from whose nostrils spurted water in the summer, when someone remembered to turn it on from the house. Duncan reached in his pocket and tossed in a penny. “Cora,” he said out loud, and then headed for the Drop.

  At the top of the stairs was the last remaining mulberry tree, old and twisted and hanging by a root-toe to the land as it leaned precariously toward the sea. In late summer, the tree rained buckets of treacly berries to the ground, where they attracted yellowjackets and birds before being tracked into the house, darkening the floors and tinting the rugs. One tree could not produce enough to make more wine, but his mother was able to scavenge a few quarts for a cloying jelly that she and Nod lathered on toast. Duncan looked down at the beach, and there they were, messing with the inflatable’s outboard motor. He reached for the iron railing to start his short descent down the Drop, and with each footfall on the loose stones, bits of rubble tumbled to the beach below. Halfway down, a gnarly wild cherry tree had sprouted from the crevice of the rocks and served as a newel post. He wondered how it stayed alive in such inhospitable earth. As it was, it was twisted and contorted, a third the size of its kin near the road. “What a difference a good home environment makes,” Cora once noted. As he neared the bottom, he passed the spray zone where seaside goldenrod and beach pea held the earth in place. Judging from the visible tops of the stone pilings where Uncle Lloyd had kept up his herring weir, it was mid-tide. Duncan wondered how the market for herring was these days. He had to start thinking of what he would do for work if he could not make Seacrest’s fly.

  Chandu met Duncan at the bottom of the steps, and the two of them walked gingerly along the shingled beach toward his family, who did not look up. They were near the jetty, whose ramp was hanging limp in the water with no float attached. The rubber inflatable was beached because of it and seemed to be going nowhere, if their carrying-on was any indication. Around the crescent tip of beach, Duncan heard the rattle of chains and the sound of moorings being pulled at the Boat Club basin. A screaming seagull passed overhead and released a mussel, shattering the shell and splattering its occupant on the rocks. A half dozen gulls arrived to fight over it. “There’s never any shortage of animals willing to share in the profits of others, eh Chandu?”

  The dog whined in response, and Duncan saw that his front paw was tangled in fishing line. As he stopped to free him of it, he took in the sheer amount of garbage that had washed up lately. Detergent bottles, lobster buoys, beach chairs—the tide of garbage rose and rose and never seemed to ebb. Annuncia told tales about a flotilla of plastic trash the size of Texas rolling around in the South Pacific, and seeing how much there was just on this small patch of land he could well believe it. “A million seabirds,” he’d heard her scold a boat captain recently. “One hundred thousand marine mammals and sea turtles, dead by ingesting our plastic every year. If I hear again that you’ve lost a deckload of fish bins and you don’t go back to get them, you’re going to join them.”

  Another satisfied Seacrest’s client.

  “There you go, old boy,” he said, and he held up the filament for the dog to smell. Duncan remembered how he and Nod used to string line they’d scavenge off the beach with fish vertebra they’d collect at the high-tide line and make presents of them for their mother. She wore them still.

  “Duncan, dear,” his mother called. “Stop talking to the dog and come help us!”

  Nod stood unsteadily in the rubber dinghy, which was half in the water, half out, with the outboard motor end in. His mother stood on the rocky beach and directed Nod’s pulls on the starter rope. Duncan had a moment of déjà vu, remembering this scene from years before, except it was his mother and father bickering over the motor. Nod should be arguing with a wife about the boat, not his mother. Duncan tried to remember if this was what his parents’ relationship had been like, and if his father had been forced into a life of racing through her thwarted ambitions. He seemed not to care so much about winning but liked being out on the water and enjoyed the camaraderie of other sailors. She was the one who insisted he come home to sail every day at lunchtime for practice, and he was so good-humored and eager to please her, he usually did, through most all types of weather. It was on one of those sails he had disappeared forever.

  “If we knew what was wrong with it, we could get it started,” said Nod. He kicked an empty Clorox bottle that served as the inflatable’s bailer.

  “Duncan, you get in there and give it a good pull,” his mother said.

  Duncan did not move. He was mesmerized by the sight of a bird eating another creature. “I think that’s a crow eating a baby crow.”

  His mother looked over at the gruesome scene and sighed. “Every mother struggles with the impulse to both raise her young and eat them.”

  “They do?”

  “Duncan, dear, will you please snap out of it and help get this started?”

  “Remember that tame crow that used to take spoons out of the kitchen and hide them in the boat shed?” said Nod. “Maybe they’re related.”

  “I can’t pull any better than Nod,” Duncan said. “I came down here to talk to the both of you about this proposal for Seacrest’s. I’ve found a way to keep its head above water for a few more months, but there are risks.”

  “This is no time, Duncan.”

  “We’ve got to get this started first,” said Nod, clearing his throat.

  “Tighten that screw there, Nod.” His mother squatted down and pointed a finger at the motor.

  Duncan was jealous of the freedom that insanity gave his mother and brother. They didn’t have to worry about the future of Seacrest’s or, for that matter, any future at all. Still, he had to make an effort to make them understand, but he could see he was not going to get anywhere until the dinghy was working.

  “Is the gas can full?” he asked.

  “Of course it is.” Nod picked up the red can, which was attached to the motor by black tubing, and shook it to prove there was gas. But there was no sound. Nod unscrewed the cap and looked in. “Huh,” he said.

  “You carried the gas can down from the house without realizing it was empty?” Duncan asked. There were some men, like his brother, who should be protected by law, like fish and game. Was it any wonder he still lived at home? Then Duncan remembered that he was living at home, too. Was this how people saw him? Incompetent and not fully aware of the world around him?

  “Duncan, dear,” said his mother. “Run back up to the house and get the other can out of the shed. Nod has got to retrieve the float.”

  “There is no other can,” said Nod. “I left it at the gas station.”

  “Someone found the float?” asked Duncan.

  “The Club called,” said his mother. “It washed up where they want to store their ramp. Why don’t you go siphon some gas out of your truck?”

  “No,” he said. If he agreed to it this time, they’d never get gas from the outside world again. “It’s siphon-proof.”

  “Nothing is siphon-proof,” said his mother. “If it can go
in, it can come out.”

  “We might as well wait until tomorrow,” said Nod. “By the time he returns with gas it’ll be too dark to bring the float back. I need to get enough for the car, too. I’m planning a trip.”

  “Read this,” said Duncan, handing his mother the manila envelope. She pulled the papers out and gave them a quick glance. In the dim light she seemed younger by decades, and he had a vision of how she appeared to him when he was a kid, when her hair was bright red and her face had the rough beauty of a woman too distracted to cultivate her looks. She was very much out in the world then, going to stores, parties, even traveling a bit. She had friends; she had a life outside of sailboat races. Normal, he always thought, but what did he know? He was her child, and there was no distance between them yet for him to question such a thing. Looking at her now, though, he remembered how her eyes, large and bluish-green, were always a mystery, the way her pupils never stopped moving and never settled, not even on him.

  “What’s the problem?” she said as she put the papers back in the envelope. “You need money and he wants to give you money.”

  “Osbert Marpol is not the most virtuous man I’ve ever met.”

  She handed him back the envelope. “As J. P. Morgan said, you can do business with anyone, but you can only sail a boat with a gentleman. I wouldn’t sail with this man, but you’re just doing business.”

  “Mom, you don’t sail with anyone,” said Duncan, folding the envelope into the pocket of his windbreaker. “Does that gas can have a filter?”

  Nod looked in the opening and nodded. “Why?” he asked.

  “Let’s fire up Slocum’s soup du jour. It’s pretty volatile stuff. You never know.”

  Nod and his mother agreed. One of the few things he appreciated about his family was that they never questioned even the most absurd comments or actions. If Duncan believed that soup could combust, well then, go to it. He popped the cap of the tin can and peeked in, sloshing it around to see how many solids were in it. But it didn’t slosh. It was a solid.

  “Or not,” said Duncan. “Nod, do you have your splicing knife?”

  Nod unclipped his knife from his belt and tossed it.

  Duncan flipped the instrument open and poked holes around the bottom of the container with the marlinspike while his mother and brother stared at the engine.

  “I guess I’ll drive out tomorrow and get that gas can,” said Nod, and he began to put things back to rights on the boat.

  Their mother stood up straight and wrung out the tip of her braid, which had dragged in the water. “Coming back up with us, Duncan?”

  Duncan stuck the blade in the perforated can and started slicing the metal from hole to hole, and as he did, it crumbled in his hands. The soup must have begun to burn through the can before it solidified. “I think I’ll stay here a bit and watch the sun go down.”

  While Duncan continued to work on the can, Nod and his mother pulled the inflatable up the beach and tied it to a metal eye cemented into a rock. Duncan freed the hunk at last and held the amber substance in his hands. It was not sticky, and it didn’t even smell.

  “Knife,” said Nod, and Duncan handed it to him. He was about to turn away when he stopped. “That’s a great new video of you on YouTube with an eel finger puppet.”

  “Oh, no,” said Duncan. “Not that.” Someone must have shot a phone video during his fight with Osbert. He reached into his pocket and felt around. He had taken his jacket off when he got back to work without emptying his pockets, and now the little head was rank. He let his thumb rub up against the teeth before tossing it overhand into the water. As soon as it broke through the surface, dark shapes came swimming toward it, and it disappeared.

  “Noddy, wait,” his mother said. “I forgot to record the water temp for the Log.” She took a small thermometer tied to a piece of string out of her shirt pocket and dipped it in the water. “Fifty-three degrees,” she said. “Still warm. Hmm.” She stood for a moment studying the instrument like an oracle at Delphi, then put the thermometer back in her pocket. “Don’t stand there thinking too much, Duncan. You know how you get.” And then she and Nod headed for the stairs. Chandu swayed slowly behind them, in hopes of dinner.

  “No, how do I get?” he asked, but she didn’t look back.

  Duncan turned the solidified hunk over in his hands. He looked up at the seagulls flocking in uncoordinated groups across the sky, flying to the islands where they slept. Off in the distance, he could see the lights coming on around Port Ellery, doubling itself in the water’s reflection and making it twice as lovely. He wondered if he called Cora whether she would pick up the phone again, but he knew it was hopeless. He’d blown his chance. A wave of yearning for her washed over him, as intense as the first moment he’d fallen in love.

  He hit the hunk of solidified jellyfish against a rock a few times as if there were some answer to his life to be found inside, but it did not break. It didn’t even chip. He batted it around a bit as the tide continued to recede, leaving behind the garbage of modern civilization. Almost all of it was plastic, which would never change, never go away, only keep building up and up until they were trapped alive, living and dying in an indestructible world of their own making.

  He held the amber block in his two hands and wondered.

  nine

  Whitecaps rolled in sideways from the ocean, little waves hello from a storm tossing around in the Bahamas. A chill wind cast a mist over Seacrest’s beach—not enough to make Duncan close his office window but enough to soften the world. It might be mean weather for September, but inside he was radiating a tropical front. Everything had gone along swimmingly since he’d grabbed the lifeline from Osbert a couple of weeks before. In that time he’d been able to convince himself, through the usual means of daydreams and self-delusion, that his temporary yoke of indebtedness was going to work out just fine. All signs pointed to Yes: The eel puppet video had become a darling of the global-warmites and was actively drumming up business thanks to Nod, who created a YouTube account linking the gull and the eel back to the company. Orders for the spring season were pouring in from nurseries around the country for Go Kelp! And once these retailers were customers, the sales department could hook them on the new hybrid fertilizer, Surf ’n’ Turf, when it was introduced, the thought of which got Duncan so excited he trotted downstairs to the factory floor to be part of the fun. His marketing consultant was even considering putting Duncan’s picture on the label, but they could not do anything at all until they got the formula stabilized. The garbage—or garpost, as they agreed to call it—arrived in the middle of the night, and Osbert’s employees took care of it all. Duncan never saw Osbert, who seemed to have crawled back under whatever rock he’d come from. By morning, the grinder and emulsion had done its job, turning garbage into slurry ready to be dried. That day’s batch had just finished coming out of the dehydrator, and Annuncia was beaming at the contents of the barrel like a parent at a newborn. Duncan joined her, and they sighed together in contentment.

  “To create the Surf ’n’ Turf mix, I decided to keep the finished lines separate until the last minute for better quality control,” she said and clasped a fistful of light gray powder. “So this is pure garpost.”

  “I like it.” Duncan smiled. “I like it even before we blend it with seaweed. There’s something special about it.”

  “Then,” said Annuncia, letting the powder drift back to the barrel, “if regulators think to have a closer look, it’ll be easier to deep-six the garpost if it’s kept separate.”

  “What could the regulators find?” asked Duncan. “What is there for us to worry about?”

  “No worries.” She took a rag out of her smock pocket and wiped her hands clean. “It’s just hard to keep the nitrogen level under control sometimes. We just want to keep our ducks in a row.”

  “These ducks,” said Duncan. “Are they … legal?”

  She put her rag back in her pocket and turned to him. “Don’t fear change, Dun�
�n. Change can save you. When was the last time you talked to Cora?”

  “I’m not sure what that has to do with anything,” he said, but under her gaze he continued talking. “She needs a little more space.”

  “Space?” she said, staring at him. “Seems a funny time for space.”

  She delivered this in her flat, uninflected tone, difficult to interpret. Whatever it was she meant, she did not wait for a response—not that he had one—as she flipped on a generator and turned her back on him. He watched her recede down a corridor, toward Wade and his clipboard. Duncan absently dipped his hand in the barrel, letting the smooth powder run through his fingers like sands of time. He put it to his nose.

  “Amazing. Barely smells like garbage.”

  ~

  An hour later, in the truck, he felt a momentous headache coming his way. He turned off the iPod, which had cycled to Playlist #16, made during his Philip Glass period, which sounded like a piano being pushed down the stairs. Was his life so ordered when he’d made that list a few years ago that he could so easily absorb chaos? He swerved slightly to avoid a plastic trash bag that had fallen into the street. It was pick-up day, and downtown was littered with garbage. Most of it, including the trash bags themselves, was plastic packaging. What was needed in this world was a product that could stand up to use and then dissolve to no harm in a damp landfill. Jellyfish, along with whatever Slocum had added to the soup, might just be the raw material to make that happen. Duncan had sent the hunk of solidified soup to his old college roommate, Trevor, at the state lab, and he was titillated enough to ask for more samples to play with. Duncan and Slocum were going to the beach at low tide that afternoon to gather ingredients to make another batch of “soup.”

  But first he had to drop off his truckload of donations for Josefa. People had been leaving all sorts of things at the plant for Kelp and the other rescued seagulls: Cases of sardines, medical supplies, stuffed animals, and, most important, checks. Leaf peepers swung through town to see the beach where Kelp had been saved, with hopes to meet Duncan, the gull’s savior. Wade kept them out of the factory but profited from them by selling photocopied, handwritten directions to Josefa’s for $2.00 a pop. “A public service,” he called it, and in a way it was. The city’s streets had been laid out in the 1700s on top of mule paths, then randomly marked as one-ways, so getting into the center of downtown was a challenge even for natives. Duncan wished he had one of those maps now as he found himself on multiple dead-ends, often driving against the traffic as he tried to navigate the inner world of Port Ellery, a grim corrective to its public face of beaches and clam shacks. Narrow streets rose up sharply from the water, joined at the top to create a high mound of old brick buildings. Altitude had protected them from the sea over the years, but the salted wind and reflected sun had aged them. A wet day like this gave them a dark luster. Josefa lived on the other side of the hill, where the newer housing—meaning built sometime in the last century—looked older still. Vinyl clapboards were chipped and bent back, exposing foil innards, and satellite dishes sprung from eaves like warts. Dirt yards were landscaped with swing-less playsets, and the only color in the neighborhood came from plastic flowers at the Madonna bathtub shrines. As he circled the streets, lace curtains opened, then closed, and he felt himself being scrutinized. With some sense of accomplishment, at last he pulled up to Josefa’s, a single-family home that was this side of complete dilapidation and had the acrid smell of penned birds. The lawn was white with droppings. On the locked, chain-link gate, there was a sign: Shh: Kelp is sleeping. Josefa was nowhere to be seen, but Duncan heard her dogs barking inside. In the course of looking for sick gulls, she often picked up other needy animals, especially in the weeks after Labor Day when the summer people left, abandoning their pets. She found homes for them all eventually, but this time of year she still had a full house of dogs, cats, cockatiels, guinea pigs, and even a ferret. He thought of Beaky Harrow’s ferret and shuddered. When he climbed down from the pickup, he noticed a half dozen cats sitting in the branches of a tree, as solid as sandbags, looking him over.