out of nowhere, a phenomenon he’d heard about but had never yet seen. There were people struck by lightning as much as thirty minutes before a storm arrived. It wasn’t that uncommon. The charge could travel.
But today he’d been on the rigging when the strike hit. It was close enough that he felt the elation from it before he saw the burst. The hair on his neck and arms stood up as the errant bolt passed. By all rights it should have hit the Friendship, which was by far the tallest ship around, but instead it moved on, striking the Hunter. He knew it wasn’t random-lightning followed the rules of electricity-but it seemed personal somehow. The Friendship would have survived the strike, but Hawk, on the rigging, would most likely have been its casualty. He couldn’t help feeling he’d been spared.
He didn’t share his story; he knew these guys too well. They’d had enough trouble believing that there’d been a strike at all, though they certainly believed it now. The ocean had come up, and the ship rolled as it took the swells sideways. Even Rockport’s breakwater did nothing to stop the surge.
The sailors sat down below, listening to the crack and boom. As the sky lit up, the town of Rockport froze in silhouette, leaving a burned, stuttering image of terrified tourists huddled in doorways on Bearskin Neck.
Normally a rowdy group, the men were unusually quiet as they watched the Hunter 31 burn and sink.
“I thought aluminum masts didn’t conduct electricity,” one of the sailors said.
“Sure they do,” Hawk said. “The problem must have been in the grounding.”
“Shit,” one of the other guys said.
“Double shit,” another said. “We’re the highest mast in the harbor, and wet wood is a conductor.”
“We’ll be okay,” Hawk said. “We have lightning rods, and we’re grounded with copper.”
Everyone was silent, hoping that he was right.
When it finally ended, the crew made their way back on deck. One of the lines was singed, probably the result of a side flash from the Hunter 31.
Someone pointed to the mouth of the harbor. A rolling fog was moving in slowly from open ocean. It was an odd occurrence, more suited to the Pacific than this part of the Atlantic. Usually the New England fog fell in patches rather than rolled.
“Jesus,” one of the crew said.
BY 6:00 P.M. THE WHOLE of Cape Ann was fogged in. There would be no making it to Newburyport tonight.
They all walked into town. Until recently Rockport had been a dry town. Even now the only place you could get a drink was at one of the local inns, and so that’s where the crew headed. When they got to the top of High Street, Hawk broke from the group.
“Where do you think you’re going?” his friend Josh asked.
“I’m going to Salem,” Hawk said. “I’ll be back here in the morning.”
“How’re you gonna get there? Fly?” someone else asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “I’m gonna sprout little wings.”
“I wouldn’t doubt it,” one of the other guys said. The group had been in awe of his climbing skills, and of the idea that anyone actually liked being up in the air so high.
HAWK DECIDED TO HITCH A ride to the Rockport train station. The first two cars passed him, but the third one, a car full of college girls, pulled over and opened the door.
They were headed to Newburyport to a party, and they wanted him to come along.
“I don’t think so,” Hawk said, shaking his head. “I know trouble when I see it.”
“Oh, come on,” one of them said with a smile. “It’ll be fun.”
He waited at the station for the Salem train. There was almost no one riding tonight. Hawk sat alone in the last car.
The train pushed through the fog in Beverly. He could see people lining the wharves waiting for the fireworks: families on blankets, tailgaters.
When he got off the train in Salem, the streets were dry. He walked down Washington Street through groups of partying tourists and then cut down Front Street to Derby. He didn’t stop at the wharf, didn’t even stop at his boat to change. People crowded the grass at the end of Turner Street and sat in the gardens at the Gables. There was no moon tonight, so it would be a good show. He took a quick look to make sure no one was watching him, glad that the streetlight near the old house was burned out. Then he climbed the vines to the room on the second floor and let himself in through Zee’s open window.
27
ZEE COULD HEAR JESSINA downstairs, the sound of silverware clanking as she cleaned up. Breakfast was over, and she was baking something.
Zee noticed the scratch marks she had left on Hawk’s back. She felt bad about it, hoped he wouldn’t take off his shirt at work today. But watching him half dressed and sitting on the edge of the bed, something stirred in her again, and she wanted to reach out to him.
“Do you have to go?” she said to him, and he laughed and turned to face her.
“I’ve got to get back to Rockport,” Hawk said.
She reached out and pulled him onto the bed, unzipped his pants and went down on him. He groaned.
“Shh,” she said, hearing Finch’s walker below, heading toward the kitchen.
“I’m not the one who needs shushing, am I?” He grinned as he moved slowly on top of her. And when he was close and when she started to moan, he clamped his hand over her mouth and pressed hard. She arched her back and rolled onto him and bit down hard on his hand, and he didn’t pull it away. And she didn’t care anymore if Jessina heard them or even if Finch did, because she was no longer here.
THEY’D BEEN SLEEPING TOGETHER FOR almost a month. Zee knew that Mattei would tell her it was obsessive, especially so soon after Michael. Mattei would tell her that Hawk was her drug of choice. But she didn’t want to think about Mattei or about Michael or Finch downstairs with Jessina still hand-feeding him his meals and Zee letting it slide. Zee knew she shouldn’t let her do it, because he needed to be able to feed himself, to hold on to that skill. She had been here for six weeks now, and things with Finch were clearly slipping. She couldn’t help but let them slip, because there were so many of those things, too many details to manage. Everyday tasks the rest of us take for granted, from buttoning a shirt to getting up from a chair, had to be watched and aided. So when Zee could escape for a while into another world with Hawk, she did so gratefully.
If Hawk was her drug of choice, then he was her only vice. She couldn’t get enough of him. She lived in two worlds, or so it seemed. Her days were filled with the business of caregiving and all the things that went along: ordering food from Peapod, diapers and lotion so Finch’s skin wouldn’t break down, a soft washcloth to bathe him, prunes for constipation, Oreos for treats. When Finch wandered, which he did whenever he got to the tail end of a dose, she followed him, making sure he didn’t fall with each unsteady step.
She couldn’t get him to use the railings that Hawk had installed. It wasn’t that he wouldn’t use them, more that he couldn’t seem to figure out how, or couldn’t make his hand grasp the rails that would steady him. Instead Zee kept placing his walker in front of him, reminding him softly each time he moved to “use the walker.”
Most of the time, she felt as if she were talking to a child, though she knew full well that he understood her words. This was her father, yet it wasn’t. It was a duality she had stopped trying to resolve. Finch was now both child and father. She realized that her need for a father was profound. But with so much unresolved between them, theirs had often been an uneasy relationship. Still, he had always been there when she needed him. And now he was the one who needed her.
The tender feelings she had for Finch, when they came to her, seemed to come from that vulnerable place she recognized in him, a place that may have always been there but that was now the more prevalent part of his otherwise thorny personality. Finch had always used his intellect to distance himself. When things became too much for him, he had often spoken in quotes or riddles, a quality that seemed to amuse Melville but one that Zee had found frustrating. And now, once the new drug had left his system, the one that caused the hallucinations, he
