By the time the custodians arrived to haul Higgs off, Beth lay prostrate, bloodied and broken. According to eyewitness reports, Beth—bleeding through her stark white uniform, her face puffed and dangerously shiny—had screamed: “Lord love a duck!” Screaming this inane phrase over and over: Lord lovva duck! Lord lovva duck!
Chester Higgs was taken to another facility and, at eighteen, transferred to a state penitentiary. He’d never confess to what set him off. Beth meanwhile was laid up for some time in the hospital. Her hip had to be fused. Her kneecap didn’t heal properly. She was placed on long-term disability and would never work at the ranch again.
From the day she returned from the hospital until the end of her life, Luke’s mother rarely left the house. She’d sit alone in the TV room, an odious shape in the shadows. When Luke got home from school, she would summon him to her side.
Lucas! Come sit with your mommy.
Luke’s feelings for her changed gradually. Before the incident, he’d loved his mother openheartedly in spite of the worrisome signs—the spankings that left welts, the way her gaze could sit upon his skull like a tarantula ready to sink in its fangs.
But during the Bad Years, she became truly cruel. In time, Luke realized that cruelty was an implicit facet of her nature; she’d simply taken a while to express it.
6.
LUKE FINALLY FELL BACK ASLEEP and awoke hours later as the yacht slit the night sea. The feeling was not unlike being in a luxury sedan speeding across a freshly laid strip of asphalt; Luke sensed the velocity in his marrow, but the fine calibration of the machine prevented him from truly experiencing it.
He sat up in bed. If he’d had another dream, he couldn’t remember it.
He hadn’t dreamed regularly since he was a child, sleeping in the same room as his brother, Clayton, their beds separated two feet apart—Clayton had measured that distance, bedpost to bedpost. He measured a lot of things, space being vital to him.
Clayton had suffered night terrors pretty regularly as a child; he’d thrash, shriek, even make these doglike yelps. Usually their mother would shoulder through the door to shake Clay awake so violently that his head snapped back and forth.
You’re fine! she’d say, slapping Clayton’s cheeks hard enough to pinken the skin. You’re perfectly fine, for heaven’s sake!
Some nights, when Clayton started to thrash, Luke would slide under the covers with him. Clay’s skin was clammy and too hot—it made Luke think, horribly, of slipping into bed with someone who’d been boiled alive. Sometimes he’d wrap his arm around Clayton’s chest and whisper softly to him.
Ssshhh, Clay. It’s okay, just a nightmare. You’re okay, you’re home safe in bed.
Luke rose from the bed and padded into the bathroom. The carpet of the yacht’s interior was incredibly soft; it felt like walking on cotton batting. He twisted the bathroom spigot, but no water came out. Luke’s throat was gluey with thirst.
He made his way topside. His watch read 3:09 p.m. He could reset it, but time wouldn’t matter soon. Where he was going, everything was pitch-black all the time.
The ocean stretched out. A low-lying moon was halved by the horizon; they were steering straight at it, giving Luke the impression of heading toward a huge tunnel carved out of the night.
“You’re awake.”
Leo Bathgate stood on an upper deck. Shirtless, his hipbones jutting above his shorts like jug handles. “You sleep okay?”
“Out like a light before my head hit the pillow.”
“Good to hear it. Hungry?”
At the mention of food, Luke’s stomach snarled.
“Starving, actually.”
“We got grub onboard—but temper your expectations, Doc.”
Bathgate led him to a kitchen as well appointed as any restaurant’s. The food was stashed in cardboard boxes. Japanese snacks. Cans of wasabi peas, bags of shrimp chips, Choco Baby bars, Pocky, plus bottles of Fanta and Pocari Sweat.
Luke said: “Is that squid jerky?”
“Wild, huh?” said Bathgate. “This tub was brought down from the Land of the Rising Sun, right? We’re loaded for bear with Japanese delights.”
“Anything you’d recommend?”
Bathgate said, “The shrimp chips aren’t half bad. Kinda of like Cheetos except, y’know, fishy.”
Luke tore open a pack of squid jerky.
“Pretty good,” he said, chewing thoughtfully.
Bathgate said, “I found this, too.” He held up a bottle of Japanese whiskey. “I had a warm beer the other night,” he continued, “but there’s something about drinking hard liquor alone on a boat. But now you’re here, want me to crack it open?”
Luke bit into another rawhide squid, chased it with a handful of wasabi peas, and snorted as the burn hit his nostrils.
“You only live once, Leo.”
Leo poured a stiff belt of whiskey into two glasses and cocked his head at Luke.
“Want a splash of Coke? Some’d say it’s sacrilege, sugaring up good hooch. But hell, I’m a low-class man with animal tastes.”
“Oh, I doubt a low-class man would have a yachting license, would he?” Luke told Leo with a grin.
Leo tipped a wink. “No, but a low-class man would have a trawling license. A trawler and a yacht are pretty much the same thing. Just one’s a helluva lot nicer than another. Like upgrading to a Ferrari when you’re used to driving a Kia. Now you, however, a doctor…”
“My brother’s the brainiac,” Luke said. “I’m just a veterinarian.”
“Just? I’d say that’s a damn noble living.”
“Sure, and I love what I do,” said Luke. “Just, y’know… had to get there on my own. My folks couldn’t afford to send me or my brother to school. Now for Clay, there were scholarships and grants and bursaries. Me? Shoveling shit out of dog cages at the ASPCA, midnight-to-8-a.m. shift, to pay for school.” Luke smiled. “So believe me, I’m no top-shelf liquor drinker.”
Leo tipped Coke into Luke’s glass. They gave their drinks a quick stir around with their index fingers, thumbing their noses at propriety, and clinked glasses.
“Cheers, Doc.”
“Cheers to you, Leo.”
Smoky, with a burned aftertaste. Whiskey had never been his tipple. Guilt crashed over Luke. Here he was drinking another man’s property—a dead man’s property in all likelihood—and he had no appreciation for it.
7.
LEO USHERED LUKE to the helm. The instrument panel was lit in ghostly greens and blues. A monitor charted the present depth of the sea: 2,300 feet.
“I’ve been on the ocean since I was a kid,” said Leo. “My pops owned a lobster boat. I was out on it soon as I could walk. By seven, I was holding the wheel while he dragged the pots. Dad had me stand on an old telephone book.”
He laughed at the memory, his gaze returning to the water.
“I love the sea, and I understand it—much as you can understand something like this. But I haven’t spent time under it, y’know? In my line of work, if you find yourself there, well, you’ve screwed the pooch.”
The points of isolated stars reflected off the water. Luke and Clay used to stare at the stars from their bedroom’s skylight.
The light we’re looking at right now, Clay had told Luke, took billions of years to reach our eyes. Light travels at 299,792,458 meters per second. And still, it takes a billion years to get here. That’s how big the universe is. It’s 99.99999999 percent darkness. And did you know that the stars we’re looking at right now could be dead already? Burned up, nothing but a black hole. We’re just seeing their ghosts. Ghosts that traveled a quintillion miles just to say Boo!