Osprey Island

Suzy laughed helplessly, a picture in each of their minds of whatever position they’d been in a half hour before. Roddy stepped back inside and started to pull on a pair of pants.

“What do you . . . ?” Suzy started.

“He slept on the floor here last night,” Roddy said. “He can do it again. I didn’t know he was there till morning then, I don’t have to know now. Lance can fucking deal with it, then. The kid doesn’t want to be there.” Roddy shoved his bare feet into his work boots and sat down to lace them enough so he could walk.

“You want him down here?” Suzy looked around, checking the shack for evidence of herself. “Or up at Eden’s?”

Roddy did the same once-over of the room. “I think he’ll probably want to be . . .”

And then they were interrupted by the lights and the sound of another vehicle pulling into Eden Jacobs’s driveway.

“Fucking shit.” Roddy bolted up. In seconds they were both out the door and running up the hill.

Lance had gotten out of his truck and was walking quickly and angrily toward Suzy’s.

“Lance,” Roddy called as they approached, the name curt and damming, warning Lance away from whatever he was going toward.

Lance had just reached to open the passenger door of Suzy’s truck, and he stopped to peer out into the darkness for Roddy. He stood, poised there, while Squee scrunched down in the seat, curled into himself, silent.

As the scene became clear to Lance, his expression shifted. He made out Roddy coming up the hill, and then Suzy behind him. He seemed to forget entirely about Squee in the truck and let go of the handle, put his hands on his hips, and said, “Well.” He started again: “Well, what do we have here, now?”

Neither Suzy nor Roddy said anything. They kept moving toward Squee.

“Well, after all these years! Did Rodless finally get what he wanted? After all those years . . . Hey, Suze, isn’t that just about the place where you and . . . You reliving old times with Rodless, here? You give him the mercy fuck he always wanted from you, Suzy?”

“Shut your mouth, Lance! Just shut . . .” Suzy flung her hand toward Squee, hunched there in the seat, which only served to remind Lance of the mission he was actually on. He turned again to the boy in the truck, confused for a second, and looked back to Suzy running at him with Roddy beside her. “What the fuck’s he doing in your . . . ?” He flung open the door. “What are you doing in there?” he demanded of Squee. “You kidnapping my son, Suzy? You fucking bitch, are you kidnapping my son from me?”

Suzy and Roddy reached the truck and hovered there on the driver’s side. “He was on the golf course road, Lance,” Suzy said calmly. “He was out on the road in the middle of the night. I picked him up.”

This news only refueled Lance’s anger at Squee. “What the fuck did you think you were doing?” Lance slammed his fist down on the hood, and Roddy lunged at the sudden movement, the desire to protect Squee overtaking all else.

“Oh, what? Rodless gonna fight me? You’re gonna fight me, you dickless motherfucker?”

Roddy fell back immediately, hands raised in surrender. “I don’t want to fight you, Lance. The only thing I want is for Squee to get a good night’s sleep. That’s all, Lance. I just want your son to get some rest.”

“Oh, now you’re a fucking saint, you dickless piece of . . .”

“Lance!” Suzy screamed, just as a light in Eden’s bedroom came on. Suzy lowered her pitch. “His mother is . . . He wants to stay here. What is the problem with that?” Suzy’s voice was a low wail, one step from tears.

“Because I said he’s coming home with me!” Lance bellowed. And then he reached into Suzy’s truck, grabbed Squee around the waist, and hoisted him out of the seat.

Squee let out one cry of fear, that first, irrepressible wail of panic. It was obvious that he was crying from the way he held his hands over his eyes, but otherwise he let his body go slack, and Lance held him at his side with one arm, like a bag of topsoil. Lance opened the driver’s side door and shrugged Squee inside, then pushed in behind him, slammed the door, and backed down the driveway.

Eleven

THE BLESSINGS OF HYPOTHERMIA

Here be my loves among the feathered things

The angels lend their tunes to, and their wings.

—JOHN VANCE CHENEY, “Here Be My Loves”