We Live in Water Read Online Free PDF Page B

boy. Or just hold him somewhere until Oren showed up.
    He couldn’t stop his thoughts, which were like another broken rib.
    They’d never expect him to go back. He told himself this, but it was stupid justification.
    He wasn’t going back because it was the smart play.
    He was going back because of the boy.
    Son of a bitch, this makes no sense, Oren thought, as he edged himself out of the culvert, thinking of that Japanese plane again, and the way it just fell out of the sky.
1992
    TIM FLETT lay like a stranded whale on a massive brown leather couch, in a room overlooking the lake, watching a big screen television that had been planted in front of the fireplace mantel. It was hard to see where the couch ended and where the old widower began. He was, as his daughter Ellie had explained outside, a mess—the result of runaway diabetes and a strep infection that had almost killed him. He was missing his left leg to the knee and his right foot, parts of three fingers on his left hand, and he was wearing an eye patch over his left eye, beneath thick glasses. But that was not to say there wasn’t a lot of Tim Flett: massive, great foothills of haunches rising into a rolling stomach covered with big gray sweats and bare arms dimpled and pinched beneath gray sheets of skin, rising to the thick red folds of his neck and chest. He breathed like two men snoring. His hair was red, short and curly, and it was hard to tell it from the mottled skin on his neck and head. He looked up from the TV and smiled.
    “Hiya, sweetheart,” he said to his daughter.
    Ellie introduced Michael, who looked around the cabin’s main room. Three big windows looked out on the bay. The walls were cut from halved logs and the room was rustic, like a small lodge, with stuffed fish and family pictures competing for wall space. Next to the couch was a big, solid-looking portable toilet, on the other side of it a dormitory refrigerator.
    “Forgive my appearance,” Tim Flett said. “I’m donatin’ my body to science. One piece at a time.”
    Ellie smiled. Michael wondered how many times she’d heard that joke.
    “Did the nurse come by this afternoon, Dad?”
    “She’s a nurse?” Tim Flett asked, looking at Michael for a reaction. “Well, that explains it. I thought she was just a really clean hooker.”
    When Flett was done laughing and there was a lull, Michael reached in his briefcase for the news story and the betting slip. Ellie watched him. “Dad,” she said, leaning forward. “Michael is trying to find out about his father.” And then she told the story: how Michael’s mother had died a year earlier, that he was the middle of three kids, even his father’s name. “Did you know this man, Oren Dessens?”
    Tim Flett’s eyes shot to Michael’s. And the hand with the missing fingers seemed to rise of its own accord to rub the big man’s jaw. “You’re Oren’s boy?” He looked past Michael, out the window to the lake. “Christ. I can’t believe it. Oren Dessen’s boy.”
    Michael rose and handed him the betting slip. Flett took it with his good hand, which shook with the effort. “I ain’t seen one of these in . . .” He trailed off, turned it over and read the note. “Jesus,” he said. He looked at Michael again. “Oren Dessens. Jesus. I can’t believe you’re here.”
    “Do you know what happened to him?” Michael asked.
    Flett looked up, his eyes wet. “Not really,” he answered after a long pause. “Not after he left here. There was some trouble. The night he wrote this.” His skin reddened. “Oren took some money from this woman and her husband. He came out here to have me straighten it out, but the guy he owed the money to was a hard guy.” He looked at Ellie. “I ever tell you about Ralph Bannen, honey?”
    Ellie shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
    “Big old guy. Bigger’n me even. His back looked like a damn barn. Last time I saw your dad,” Flett said, “was that night. Bannen wasn’t the kind