The Lake of Dreams - Kim Edwards [162]
Now I could hardly breathe. “He was casting out his line,” I murmured.
“Yes. Into the reeds.”
“The night he died.”
“Yes.”
He looked across the desk then and we stared at each other, not speaking, as if his words had torn open the very air and all the oxygen was fading from the room.
“I was trying to do the right thing,” he said, as if I would surely see the reasoning and understand this. “I was trying to help him. Help you all.”
I closed my eyes for a second. “And he wouldn’t listen.”
“No.” He looked away again, out the window this time, into the back parking lot, where the gravel was a dim gray beneath the streetlamp. “Marty would never listen to me. He’d showed me those same papers. The ones you found, I bet. Showed them to me and told me what he was going to do, didn’t want to hear anything I had to say about it. And it was his land, sure, like he said.” Art made a gesture of frustration, a swift cut of his hand, as if reliving the argument with my father. “His to throw away if he wanted. Foolish. Not my business, though. But this was. Dream Master was my business. And I told him, again and again, if he found this person, if she laid claim to one piece, then what was to keep her from getting it all? Your father, he didn’t know what he was opening up, what he was getting into.”
Or maybe he did, I thought. Maybe he’d been enjoying a quiet kind of revenge. I didn’t say this, though. I only nodded. I’d gone very still as Arthur talked, anchored by a strange calm, as if I’d stepped outside myself and was watching the conversation unfold from far away. In the silence, Art spoke again.
“I couldn’t sleep for thinking about what he might do with those papers. Days, this went on. Then I woke up one night in the middle of the night. Was rudely awakened, I should say. Joey was always on the wild side, but usually he had the good sense to sneak in when he broke curfew. That night, though, he came home spitting mad. He was throwing things around, a car was waiting for him in the driveway. Before I could get up and ask what was going on, he’d found what he needed and left again, slamming the door hard on his way out. Damned if I could get back to sleep. Beautiful clear night it was, the kind we used to wait for as boys. I had a feeling Marty would be out there. In the marsh, where he always went—I had a hunch he’d be there. It’s where we always used to go. So I drove to the lake and took the boat out. I just wanted to talk to him if he was there. And he was. He wasn’t hard to find. It was a very still night.”
I nodded, remembering how I’d stood talking with my father in my mother’s moon garden on that same night, surrounded by such quiet it seemed I could hear the flowers in their delicate unfurling.
“He must have heard me coming, but he didn’t even look up. I pulled the boat up near him, cut the motor. Then we just drifted. He kept casting his line, reeling it in. Wouldn’t speak. We drifted, two boats, dark fish swimming beneath us.”
Dark fish swimming everywhere, I thought.
“Finally, I grabbed hold of his boat. The metal was cold, and I was so frustrated; I told him he was being a fool. He turned around, maybe he only meant to knock my hand away, but his hand hit me in the face. I stood up, and he did, too. I don’t think I hit him first, but maybe I did. Who knows, I might have. I just kept saying Marty, stop it, damn it, stop, but he wouldn’t, and so I pushed him away. Hard. Hard as I could. He lost his balance, fell. I did, too, on the recoil. I fell into the bottom of my boat, almost capsized it. Went skidding away, careening. It was dark. I didn’t see anything as much I felt it, heard it. It was a terrible sound, his head cracking against the side of the boat. It must have been his head. He didn’t cry out, shout, anything.”
Art paused and looked at me and it was all anguish on his face. I couldn’t speak, caught in that still place,