Chaz Brenchley lives in Newcastle upon Tyne with two cats and a famous teddy bear. He has made his living as a writer since he was eighteen, and this year marks his twenty-third anniversary in the job. A recipient of the British Fantasy Award, he is the author of nine thrillers, most recently Shelter, plus a major new fantasy series, ‘The Books of Outremer’, based on the world of the Crusades. He has also published three fantasy books for children and more than 500 short stories in various genres. His time as Crimewriter-in-Residence at the St Peter’s Riverside Sculpture Project in Sunderland resulted in the collection Blood Waters, and he is presently writer-in-residence at Northumbria University. Brenchley’s novel Dead of Light is currently in development with a film company. ‘I was saving the title “Everything, in All the Wrong Order” for my autobiography,’ says the author, ‘before it dawned on me that I had no intention of writing an autobiography, even if anyone had been interested in reading it; at which point, of course, the title was free for general use. It only took about five minutes thereafter to realise that there was a story inherent within it, that had just been waiting for me to drop the possessiveness and the preconceptions and actually think about what it was saying.’
JAMES VAN PELT
Savannah is Six
For as long as Poul could remember, he’d spent the summer at the lake where his brother drowned.
This year, as they climbed in the van, Leesa said cryptically, ‘Savannah is Six.’
Poul held his hand on the ignition key but didn’t turn it. ‘I know.’
Each year since Savannah was born, it got harder to come out. The nightmares started earlier, grew more vivid, woke him with a scream choked down, a huge hurting lump he swallowed without voicing. Poul took longer to pack the van; he delayed the day he left, and when he finally started, he drove below the speed limit.
They pulled into the long, sloping driveway down to the cottage just after noon. Leesa had slept the last hour and Savannah coloured in the back seat, surrounded by baggage and groceries. Her head was down, very serious, turning a white sky into a blue one. She always struck Poul as a sombre child, for six, as if there was something sad in her life that returned to her occasionally. Not that she didn’t smile or didn’t act silly at times, but he’d catch her staring out the window in her bedroom before she’d go to bed, or her hand would rest on a favourite toy without picking it up, and she seemed lost. She was quick to tears if either parent scolded her, which happened seldom, but even a spilled drink at dinner filled her eyes, the tears brimming at the edge, ready to slip away.
Their cottage sat isolated by a spur of nature conservancy land on one side and on the other by a long, houseless, rocky stretch. He bought the place fourteen years earlier, the year after he married, from Dad, who didn’t use it any more.
Only a couple of hours from Terre Haute, Tribay Lake attracted a slower-paced population; county covenants kept the skiers off, so the surface remained calm when the wind was low. From the air it looked like a three-leafed clover, with several miles of shoreline. An angler in a boat with a trolling motor could find plenty of isolated inlets covered with lily pads where the lunkers hung out.
By mid-June the water warmed to swimming temperature — inner tubes were stacked next to the boathouse for a convenient float — and the nights cooled off for sleeping. Poul and Leesa took the front room overlooking the lake. In the first years they’d opened the big windows wide at night to listen to crickets. Lately, though, he went to bed alone while she worked crossword puzzles, or she retired early and was asleep by the time he got there.
Poul knew the lake by its smell and sounds — wet wood and fish and old barbecues and waves lapping against the tyres his dad had mounted on the pier to protect the boat, the late night birds trilling in the hills above the lake, and an echo of his mother’s voice, still ringing, when Neal didn’t come back. ‘Where’s your brother?’ she’d asked, her eyes already wild. ‘Weren’t you watching Neal?’ She called his name as she walked down the rocky shore looking for the younger son.
Savannah closed her book and said, ‘I’m going to catch a big fish this year. I’m going to see him in my raft first, then I’ll hook him. But I want to visit Johnny Jacobs and his kittens first.’ Over Poul’s objection, Leesa had bought Savannah a clear-bottomed raft, just big enough to hold a child, and it was all she’d talked about for weeks.
Poul said, ‘They won’t be kittens any more, Speedy. That was last fall. They’ll be cats by now.’ Gravel crunched under the wheels. Leesa didn’t move, her sweater still bunched between her head and the window.
Poul wondered if she only pretended to be asleep. It was a good way to not converse, and the lean against the window kept her as far away from him as possible. ‘We’re here, Leesa,’ he said, touching her hand. She didn’t flinch, so maybe she actually had been sleeping.
Leesa rubbed her eyes, then pushed her short, black hair behind her ears. She’d started dyeing it last year even though Poul hadn’t noticed any grey. His hair had a couple of streaks now, but his barber told him it made him distinguished. At thirty-five, he thought ‘distinguished’ was a good look.
‘I’m going to walk down to Kettle Jack’s to see if he has fresh corn for the grill. I like grilled corn my first night at the lake,’ Leesa said. Poul wondered if she was talking to him. She’d turned her face to the side, where the oak slipped past.
Poul pulled the car under the beat-up carport next to the cottage. Scrubby brush scraped against the bumper. Leesa opened the door and was gone before he could stop the engine. Savannah said, ‘I don’t like corn on the cob. Can we have hotdogs?’
‘Sure, Speedy.’ On an elm next to the cottage, a frayed rope dangled, its end fifteen feet from the ground. Summers and summers ago, there’d been a knot in the end and Neal hung on while Poul pushed him. ‘Harder, Poul!’ he’d yell, and Poul gave another shove, sending the younger boy spinning. Poul looked at the rope. He didn’t remember when it had broken; it seemed like this was the first time he’d seen it in years. With the door open now, forest smells filled the car: the peculiar lakeside forest essence that was all moss and ferns and rotted logs half buried in loam, damp with Indiana summer dew. He and Neal had explored the woods from the cottage to the highway, a half-mile of deadfall and mysterious paths only the deer used. They hunted for walking sticks and giant beetles, or, with peanut butter jars in hand, trapped bulbous spiders for later examination.
Someone yelled in the distance, a child, and Poul jumped. He stood, his hands resting on the car’s roof. Between the cottage and the elms beside it a slice of lake glimmered and a hundred feet from shore, a group of children played on a permanently anchored oil drum and wood-decked diving platform, whooping in delight.
‘I’d like mustard on mine, and then I’ll go see the kittens,’ said Savannah. She had her duffel bag over her shoulder — it dragged on the ground — and was already moving towards the back door.
‘Sure, Speedy,’ Poul said, although Savannah was already out of earshot. Poul arched, pushing his hands into his back. Sunlight cut through the leaves above in a million diamonds. He left the baggage in the car to walk to the shore. To his left, a mile away, partly around the lake’s curve, Kettle Jack’s long pier poked into the water. A dozen sailboats lay at anchor, their empty masts standing rock-still in the windless day. Partway there, Leesa walked determinedly on the dirt path towards the lodge. Slender as the day they married. Long-legged. Satiny skin that bronzed after two days of sun. He remembered warm nights marvelling at the boundaries where the dark skin became white, how she murmured encouragement, laughing deep in her throat at shared joys.