When Duck leaves the hospital he drives straight home. Inside, he gets the pieces of his old bed down from the attic; he hasn't slept in it for years, not since he left Wilby looking for something else, but the mattress doesn't smell too musty, and he thinks it'll do okay.
He puts it together in what he privately calls his studio, which is what used to be his bedroom when he was growing up. It's got a window on the east and one on the south, good light for painting. He shoves the tackle box he keeps his paint in under the bed; the blank canvases are leaned against one wall, the completed paintings against another, and the easel goes into the closet. He'll set them up again when…when things settle out.
He moves his own things out of his bedroom (what was his parents' room, then his mum's room when his father went fishing and never came back), makes the bed with clean pale-blue sheets, neatly folds the colorful quilt at the foot of the bed. He squints at the effect, tries to imagine seeing it through someone else's eyes. He guesses it looks enough like a guest room to pass.
Just before he'd left the hospital he'd scribbled his phone number on a piece of paper and pressed it into Dan's hand, saying, "For when they let you out. You can stay with me."
Dan had looked at the piece of paper in that way that Duck knew meant he didn't want to meet his eyes, so Duck had added, "Got a guest room. Better than the motel."
It had been the right thing to say; Dan looked up again, smiled and stroked the back of Duck's hand just a little, just a touch, and rasped out, "All right."
The first time Duck met Dan Jarvis was not long after Duck had moved back to Wilby. He'd been driving around the island, looking at what had changed and what hadn't. Jarvis Video was something new. Used to be Winston Pickle's Bait and Tackle; Duck wondered what had happened to Winston, if he'd set up in a new place or died or moved to the mainland or what.
It still smelled like a bait and tackle shop a little, under the fresh purple paint. The man behind the counter was a lot better looking than Winston ever was; tall and skinny, like Duck liked them - like he was himself - and his face all angles and planes, cheekbones sticking up here and his nose making a sharp curve there. A face he'd like to try painting, sometime, if he ever got the nerve to move on to painting people's faces.
The man stood abruptly when Duck came in. "I'm sorry - we don't have everything out yet - but if there's something you want, I can order it," he said, looking eager but nervous, like a dog that wanted to make friends but was more used to being kicked than petted.
"It's okay," said Duck. "You're Jarvis?"
"Dan Jarvis, yes. We just moved here a few months ago - my wife and I, I mean."
Duck nodded. Of course he had a wife. Small town like Wilby, not a lot of people moved out there on their own. Pretty much the only single people were the islanders who'd stayed, or the islanders who'd left and come back, like Duck. The mainlanders came in couples or in families, and usually that's the way they left. He smiled and held out his hand. "Duck MacDonald. Anything needs fixing, you let me know."
Dan shook his hand like he wanted to hang on to it, take it home, or maybe that was just Duck's wishful thinking. "Well, if you -" he started, at the same time that Duck said "Got to get -", and they both laughed a little. Then Duck heard the door open behind him, and Dan let go like his hand was on fire.
"We were out of ham, but I made - oh, hello." Duck turned around and there she was, tall and dark and brittle, with a desperate sort of warmth in her smile. She reached past him to place a sandwich on the counter in front of Dan.
"Val, this is Duck," Dan said.
"Well, hello, Duck." Her voice was high and false, the same bright tone Buddy's wife had used when Buddy had introduced them. Carol, that was her name. He'd bet she didn't remember his; he'd bet Val wouldn't remember it either. She stepped in front of the counter so that she was between him and Dan. "What can we do for you?"
"Just checking the place out," he said. He turned back to Dan. "See you around."
Dan swallowed and his eyes cut to Val for a moment, and then he nodded at Duck. "See you around."
Dan's looking a little excited and a little embarrassed, and he's holding the flowers Duck brought in a Styrofoam coffee cup half-filled with water; by now they're wilted, nearly dead, but Duck can't help smiling when he sees it. "Come on," he says, and he holds the door open. The nurse just stares, but she looks away when he grins at her.
Duck stops at the motel, but Dan shakes his head. "I've just got the one bag. In my car."
Duck remembers the boxes behind Dan's house, the pictures, the books, the bits of the life he was trying to escape. "Your house," he starts, but the expression on Dan's face brings him to a stuttering halt. He shrugs. "I can go by later, pick up what you want."
Dan turns his head toward his and the raw anguish in his eyes makes Duck want to take him in his arms, right there in his truck at the edge of the Wildwood's parking lot. Right there where he'd sat with Emily only a few days ago, watching Dan leave his room. And here he was again, trying to find the right words, the right things to do and say.
Sometimes all you need is someone to be there for you, arms around you and a solid chest to rest your head against; Duck knows he's not good with words, but he can be that for Dan, if that's what Dan needs. Not that he's got lots of practice. But somewhere in the back of his mind is the memory of his father doing that for him, holding him close, smelling of sea-salt and whiskey, his rough cheek pressing against the top of Duck's head.
Except that Dan's still getting used to touching and being touched, and Duck doesn't want to make it worse. Instead he pretends not to notice the tension that radiates from Dan's hunched shoulders, and he puts the truck in gear.
Under the bright fluorescent lights of the police station, Duck slouches against the wall and talks with Buddy while Dan signs for his car. Buddy's eyes keep flicking over toward Dan. "Carol's all upset about that business," he says. "She'd probably tear up the contract if he asked her to."
Duck shrugs. "He won't ask."
Buddy smiles just a tiny bit, a tight smile that barely moves the corner of his mouth and doesn't reach his eyes. "She might do it anyway," he says, but Duck shakes his head. He doesn't know what Dan needs or wants, not yet, but it's clear that Dan's not the only one who needs something. Buddy's on edge; he can see it in the nervous tapping of his fingers, the lines around his eyes revealed by the harsh light. It's like there's wires strung between Buddy and Carol and Sandra, and they're all vibrating like they're going to break, and it won't take much to break one set or the other but Duck doesn't want to be the one to do it.
"If she could hold off on it for a while," he says, and Buddy nods.
Duck keeps checking his rearview on the way to his house. Not that he really thinks that Dan will veer suddenly off the road (although there isn't anywhere he could do much damage to himself anyway, no cliffs or big drop-offs, and the worst that could happen is he'd end up in the shallow river) but maybe he'll decide that he wants to go back to the motel. Or to the ferry terminal, and to the mainland, and somewhere that isn't Wilby Island.
But the black car follows obediently along behind, their own little parade of two, and Dan slings his bag over his shoulder when he gets out, like he really is intending on staying for a while, after all.
The first time Duck saw Dan at the Watch was early summer. Duck didn't go there much himself since coming back to Wilby, and never in the spring when it was too damn cold to sit out on the rocks for any but the most desperate or hardy folks. But in the summer, when the chill spring wind had mellowed and the long days warmed the granite boulders, all sorts of people went out to the Watch. High-school kids necked in their cars in the parking lot; cheating spouses - who parked somewhere else and walked surreptitiously down the road, pretending they were going somewhere else - met at the edge of the woods by the lighthouse.
Out towards the rocks, on the far end of the woods, was where the guys hung out, where Duck went. Partly it was a kind of social club, because naturally in a place as small as Wilby Island all the gay men knew each other, although they didn't want to draw attention to themselves by meeting anywhere public. But there were men from the mainland too, who knew it as a cruising beach, and for those who liked their sex anonymous and no-strings-attached it made a decent pick-up spot.
Duck mostly went just to hang out. It was a place he didn't have to hide who he was; of course, he had it easy, because everybody in Wilby already knew who Duck was, or who they thought he was. He was the quiet handyman, the man they called to fix their toilets and paint their siding, and they probably all figured the only reason he didn't have a girlfriend was because he'd broken up with some woman on the mainland and was still on the rebound, or something. It was tougher for guys like Hugh Selby, who came from Halifax twenty years ago and was still an outsider, or for Mike and Martin, who had moved from somewhere in Ontario and opened an antique store for tourists from the mainland to spend their money in, and who probably hadn't had a single local stop inside in all the years they'd been there.
Hugh was there, and Charlie, and Skip, and over by the trees he saw Preston making out with someone Duck didn't recognize, someone from the mainland. Skip was also talking to a mainlander, the sort of quiet and intense talk that was probably a prelude to them going off into the trees as well.
The men all looked up when Duck stepped into the moonlight at the edge of the circle of boulders where they sat, smoking and talking and drinking. "Hey, Duck," said Hugh. "Heard you were back in town. Sorry about your mother."
Duck shrugged a little, took out a cigarette, and Hugh leaned forward and lit it from his.
"You back for good?" said Charlie.
"Don't know yet. Probably."
Charlie held out the bottle he was drinking from, but Duck shook his head; Charlie grinned and took a big swallow, like he was just as happy that Duck wasn't going to take any of his booze. "You meet anyone out there?"
Duck shrugged again. "Didn't work out."
"Never does," said Charlie. He stood up and grinned, teeth flashing white in the moonlight; not as white as they'd been when he and Duck were both twenty, but white enough. "Nothing measures up to an island boy."
Duck and Hugh laughed, and there was a snort from behind him, a mainlander who wasn't quite bold enough to come into their circle and sit on a boulder until Charlie waved him over. "It's okay. Long as you know who's the real goods around here."
Duck shook his head, smiling. Charlie always was a real cut-up. Probably why it didn't work out for them; Charlie was big and loud and fun to be around when they were all out at the Watch, but off by himself Duck didn't care for big and loud.
Charlie swaggered over to him. "I don't know that you still count. Since you've been away."
Duck got to his feet, right up against Charlie. "You don't think I still measure up?"
Laughter from the others, and Charlie put his hands on Duck's hips and nuzzled into his neck. "I guess I'd better check for myself," he whispered into Duck's ear, then tugged him off toward the trees. "For old times' sake."
Duck allowed himself to be drawn over to the privacy of a stand of pines. His body was responding to Charlie, to his confident manner, to his smiles and winks, and yeah, it had been a while. They kissed for a moment, and under the tang of the liquor Charlie's mouth was hot and familiar, like a place he'd thought he'd forgotten but knew without thinking. He leaned back against scratchy bark and undid his pants as Charlie slid down to take him into his mouth. Yeah, that was good.
He closed his eyes and concentrated on the sensation, on the warmth around his dick, on the sounds he heard from Charlie's wet mouth and from the woods around them, on the quiet roar of the sea underneath it all, and it was easy to lose himself and let it all build until it washed through him in a wave. When he slumped against the tree afterwards and opened his eyes, he was looking straight into the deer-in-the-headlights face of Dan Jarvis.
Duck gets himself a glass of water he doesn't actually need while Dan puts his things in the bedroom. He doesn't want Dan to think he's watching, even though he wants to watch, to see if Dan hangs his clothes in the closet like he's going to stay or if he just throws the bag on the bed so he can leave in a hurry. He's barely turned away from the kitchen sink, glass in hand, when Dan comes back out.
"That was quick," he says, and takes a sip.
Dan shrugs. "I don't have much to put away."
"Did you want to go to your store?"
"I - I can't. Not yet," says Dan, looking at the floor.
"All right," says Duck easily. "In that case, you can help me install a French drain over at Martha Sutherland's place. With two of us we ought to get it done today. You got any old clothes?"
Dan looks up and shakes his head, but there's half a smile on his face. "Just what I have on me."
"Can't mess those up," says Duck, setting his glass down on the old linoleum counter. "Let me see what I've got."
Dan follows Duck into the room that's now Duck's bedroom. Duck's got plenty of old clothes, even though the shirts will probably hang loosely on Dan's more slender shoulders, and the pants might be a little short. When Duck turns away from the closet with a paint-spattered t-shirt in one hand and a ratty pair of sweat pants in the other, he sees that Dan's bent down, looking at one of the paintings that are leaning against the wall. It's the one of the rocks and flowers by the edge of the river, near the bridge; not his best work, but he's proud of the way the colors worked out, the water looking like it's really flowing, the sparkles of pale green and pink and gold that hint at the sunrise just out of sight.
Dan looks over his shoulder at him. "Did you do this?"
"Yeah."
When Dan straightens up he's looking at Duck a little differently than he had before. A little more respect, maybe, in that gaze. "I didn't know you painted. I mean, painted pictures, not just houses."
"Nobody knows. Except for you, now."
"I like it," says Dan, and Duck can't tell whether he means that he likes the painting he was looking at, or whether he likes the idea that Duck paints, but either way, it's good.
"I'll show you the rest sometime. If you want."
Dan smiles, the first real, full smile that Duck has seen on his face all day. "I'd like that."
Duck tosses him the clothes and Dan goes off into his bedroom to change; Duck slips his own clothes off, hanging his good shirt carefully in the closet (he hadn't worn it since he got back to Wilby, and now he's worn it twice in the space of a week) and taking out his overalls. He's more comfortable in his old clothes, anyway. After changing, he goes back into the living room and casts an appraising eye over Dan. Sure enough, the t-shirt's a little big and the sweat pants are a little short, but the idea that Dan's wearing his clothes is oddly warming, and it makes him grin. "I guess you'll do."
"I don't know anything about - what was it?"
"French drains," Duck says. "Just a lot of digging. I'll show you what to do."
The next time Duck had seen Dan was the night they raided the Watch.
He'd been going more frequently after that first time, hoping Dan might show up again. But a couple of weeks went by with just the usual crowd, the regulars and the occasional mainlanders, and Duck began to wonder whether he'd been mistaken. Could have been that Dan had just been out for a walk; his house wasn't far away. He was new in Wilby, didn't know, maybe, about the reputation of the Watch, and it would have seemed like a natural place for him to go. Maybe he had been shocked by what he had seen and run home to tell his wife about that nasty Duck McDonald.
But then Duck would remember the way Dan had held onto him when they'd shaken hands, the way he'd looked at him, scared and hopeful, and the way he'd jumped away when Val had come in. He thought about going to the video store but immediately discarded the idea; he wasn't about to go chasing after someone who wasn't interested. He'd wait and see if Dan came back.
The night that he did was cool and clear with a light breeze, blowing away the day's fog, and there were lots of people at the Watch. Even Mike and Martin were sitting on the boulders, smoking and drinking and talking with a mainlander; Duck supposed it was just to have a place where they could relax and not have to pretend anything. Moans and murmurs came from the woods, a counterpoint to the low rumble of waves crashing on the shore. An occasional flare of a match or the red glow of a cigarette showed flashes of bodies through gaps in the underbrush - an arm here, a bent head there, hints of what might be going on in the darkness.
Charlie and Skip strolled out of the trees just as Duck got there, and Charlie called out, "Damn, Duck, should have been here ten minutes ago."
"Wore him out, did you?" Duck said to Skip, who laughed and lit a cigarette.
"Takes more than old Skip," said Charlie. He sat down on a fallen log, then reached for a bottle of beer from a paper bag next to it and took a long pull. "Give me a few minutes and I'm good to go."
"Well, if you're looking," came a voice from off to the side: a mainlander leaning against a tree a little ways away, and he was looking straight at Duck, and he wasn't too ugly. It was easier, maybe, with the mainlanders, because you knew you wouldn't be running into them at the hardware store or the grocery. With the islanders it was different. It wasn't like Kingston or Halifax, where you could cruise the block five times a week and never see the same man twice. Where if you hooked up with someone and it worked, and it was good, you could run with it until it wasn't good any more, and if it all fell apart you only had to worry about splitting up your friends and maybe the furniture. The hole in your heart was the only real consequence, and that stayed hidden.
But on Wilby Island there were exactly seventeen gay men (if you counted Dan, which Duck hopefully did), and two of them might as well be married to each other, and two others looked like they were heading that way. Most of them kept low profiles, and those who didn't respected those who did, didn't out them in public or anything like that. If you were going to get involved with another islander, you had to understand that the guy with his hand on your dick on Wednesday night might be the guy fixing your outboard on Thursday morning.
So he looked back at the mainlander, and he gave him a nod, and they walked off into to the woods a little ways. There was a downed pine that had been caught on the way down, lodged in the branches of another tree, and the mainlander stopped there and leaned against it, pulling Duck to him, grinding his body against his. "Come on," he said, "let's see what you got."
Duck stepped back a little and undid his zipper. "Unbutton, push them down," said the man. "I want to see it." He reached into Duck's pants and pulled out his dick, slid his hand roughly along its length. "Yeah, you're good. I want you to fuck me."
"All right."
He put a condom and lube into Duck's hand, and Duck noticed he was wearing a wedding ring, gleaming dully in the darkness. It made him think of Dan. Then the man undid his own pants and pushed them down, leaned on the fallen tree. "Come on."
"All right," said Duck again. He didn't do this much at the Watch; usually it was handjobs and blowjobs, getting off quick, but he liked fucking okay, he guessed. Mainlander wanted to be fucked, he could do it.
He was easing inside, his hands tight on the man's hips, when he heard Charlie. Heavy footsteps and a loud voice, too loud for the furtive atmosphere of the Watch, but that was Charlie. He was walking into the woods near to where Duck was, saying, "Yeah, I've seen it, where the old bait and tackle was, right?"
Duck froze; the answering murmur was too low for him to catch, but he didn't have to. Because in another moment they were in view, pale skin clear in the dim light, and that was Dan there with Charlie, as though Duck had conjured him up from the sight of the mainlander's wedding ring. Charlie had him backed up against a big pine, and it didn't look as though he noticed Duck there, through the trees, but Duck saw the sharp planes of his face, the play of light and shadow.
"You gonna move?" said the man hoarsely.
"Sorry," said Duck. He could do it. All the way in, forward and back, and yeah, that was good, that felt all right. He tuned out the grunts from the man beneath him and watched Dan instead, watched his mouth gasp for air as Charlie worked him. He imagined it was himself there instead of Charlie, Dan under him instead of this anonymous mainlander, and that thought made him hot, wrenched a moan from him.
"Yeah, that's it," muttered the man under him, "do it hard, fuck me, yeah," and Duck could hear Charlie fifteen feet away saying, "you like that, yeah, let me suck you and then you do me, okay?" and he wished they would all just shut up, and then the forest was suddenly filled with bright lights and sirens, and when everyone fell silent it was too late, too late.
Duck starts Dan out on the easy stuff, clearing the rocks away from where the pipe's going to go, because the guy just got out of the hospital, and to be honest, Duck asked him along more for the company than because he really needs the help. Just to give Dan something to do other than think about his problems. But Dan puts his back into it, and pretty soon he's shoveling dirt alongside of Duck, scooping out the rocky soil and piling it up to the side.
They lay the perforated pipe in the trench and cover it up, and afterward Martha gives them iced tea and cookies, and they loll in the shade and listen to her telling them stories about the big storm of 1991, when all those fishing boats were lost, and they had to close the ferry terminal for more than a week while the damage was repaired. Dan gulps his drink and nods at the right moments - it's a good story, and he's clearly enraptured - and Duck just looks at Dan. His t-shirt is soaked through with sweat under his armpits, and there are dirt smears on the sweatpants and on his arms, but damn, he looks good. He looks happy.
In the truck, on the way back, Dan suddenly says, "We could stop by my store and get something to watch."
Duck glances over; Dan's looking out the window. Just this morning he'd said he wasn't ready. "You sure?"
"If you don't want to," says Dan, and hearing the change in his voice Duck belatedly realizes it was an offering.
"No, it sounds good. Pick me out something you like."
The videos are all in boxes, and for a moment Dan hesitates, standing by the counter. "I don't know what I'm going to do," he says.
Duck chooses to misinterpret him. "Just pick something you like."
"I mean -"
"Yeah," he says quietly. "We'll come back, fix it up. Later."
Dan nods. It looks to Duck as though he picks a box mostly at random, but he comes up with a video, and he locks the door carefully behind him when they leave.
Back at the house, Duck tells Dan to go ahead and shower first. When he hears the water running, he goes into his room and finds a piece of paper and a pencil, tries to sketch from memory the way Dan looked in the late afternoon light under the tree in Martha's yard, the dirty arms and the sliver of skin between his t-shirt and his sweatpants, but after a few minutes he gives up. He can see it in his head, but he can't put it on paper the way he can sketch something he's looking right at. He can't draw people anyway, he decides, just trees and rocks and flowing water, and he crumples up the sheet of paper and tosses it in the trash.
After Duck showers he makes them both spaghetti, dishing it out in his mum's old blue-and-white plates. Dan eats a lot more than Duck would have expected. Then they sit on the old sofa in front of the television, and Dan pops in Two Mules for Sister Sara, and they let Clint Eastwood and Shirley MacLaine take them away.
At least they didn't take them down to the police station, and that was something. But it was bad enough with the bright lights, and the sirens, and people wandering by to gawk while they were each questioned in turn and made to sign papers. Some of them were searched; Duck wasn't, but it was bad enough.
"Well, well, well," said Stan, when he got to Duck. "Disturbing the peace. Your mother wouldn't have liked that."
Duck shrugged. His mother had not liked a lot of things he'd done, but that was none of Stan's business.
"Never would have thought you were one of them," said Stan, shaking his head.
Duck took a deep breath; it wasn't worth it to get mad at a cop. Even if it was Stan, whom he'd known since forever, and hadn't liked much even back then. He looked past Stan's shoulder to where Kathleen from the Sentinel was standing at the edge of the gathered police cars, talking to a uniformed officer and taking notes. "I guess everybody's going to know soon enough," he said. And that wasn't going to be fun, yeah, but it would all blow over eventually. Maybe there'd be a couple people who wouldn't hire him any more, but he wasn't going to put on any face but his own, never had, and anyone worth anything would figure out that he was still Duck MacDonald.
When Stan had finished with him Duck walked over to where Dan was slumped against the side of a police car, his head in his hands. "Hey."
Dan looked up only enough to see who he was, that he wasn't one of the cops, and Duck could see tear-streaks glinting on his cheeks in the blue strobe flashes before he hid his face again. "Please, go away."
"They're not going to make a big deal out of it." It didn't make sense, anyway. Charlie had said they'd taken his beer and told him that having alcohol at the Watch was illegal - well, sure it was, but everybody did it. Then they'd searched him for drugs. Like he was what, bringing them up from the States in his Whaler?
"It's a big deal to me, all right? Val - oh, my God, Val," said Dan into his hands, and he was shaking, and his voice was rough and ragged. "Just go away."
Duck kisses Dan for the first time while the movie credits quietly spool across the television screen. Dan had relaxed into the worn cushions as soon as they sat down, had slid right up against Duck's side and taken his hand, and Duck had just smiled and put his feet up and watched the movie.
When the credits roll, Dan turns a fraction toward Duck, says, "Well, was it okay?"
"Yeah," says Duck. "I liked the part where they blew up the railroad bridge."
Dan nods his head, leans a little closer, and then suddenly somehow they are kissing. Dan's lips are soft and tentative, but he's the one who moved first, so Duck is happy to let him lead, to open his mouth and let Dan take whatever he wants when he's ready for it. They fall back against the side cushions in a messy sprawl of limbs and just kiss and kiss.
Duck likes the feel of Dan's body against him, sharp hipbones and awkward elbows, he doesn't care, he likes it. He likes the way Dan's fine hair tickles his neck, the way his beard stubble rasps his cheek, and he can't keep his hands from exploring Dan's body now that he's got tacit permission. Every once in a while Dan makes this little noise, sort of a moan and sort of a sob, and he pulls back and bites his lip a little and shakes his head, then dives back in again and kisses Duck harder than before.
It's good, it's real good, and they're both getting hard, pressing against each other like they're trying to fit both of them into the same small space. Dan lets him slip off both of their shirts; skin on skin is even better, and Duck slides his hands under the waistband of Dan's pants and murmurs, "Can I?"
Dan gasps a yes into his ear and wriggles against him when he undoes the zip, helping to push his pants down, and Duck eases them carefully off his hips. Then it's Duck's turn to shed the rest of his clothing, the last layer that's keeping them apart, and when there is nothing between their bodies but air he wraps his arms around Dan and pulls him as close as he can.
He kisses Dan until he can't stand it any more, until he's sure that every trace of Charlie and Val and anybody else is wiped away from Dan's skin, until the sweet friction between them is the only thing he can feel. "Oh, God," says Dan, against his mouth, "please, can you, would you…" and Duck pulls away just enough to slip one hand between them, to trap Dan's cock between his splayed fingers and his own thrusting body, and Dan's mouth falls open, he's gasping like he has been underwater for a week and is trying to cram all the oxygen he can into his lungs, inhales hard once, twice, shudders and comes.
Duck eases him down and then slides his come-slick fingers over to his own dick, a couple of strokes and that's all it takes. When he opens his eyes again, Dan is looking at him with an odd mixture of apprehension and tenderness, like he just got something wonderful but is worried someone will take it away in the next moment. Duck grins and squeezes Dan's ass with the hand that's not trapped in the messiness between them. He's not going anywhere. Dan will figure that out eventually, he's pretty sure of it.
After they've wiped off the worst of the mess with tissues, Duck suggests another shower. His bathroom is a little tight for two, and they bang knees and elbows trying to get past each other to stand under the shower head, but it's worth it to see the rivulets of water flowing down Dan's skin, to see him slick and glistening like a seal, to see him smile as he turns and offers to soap Duck's back. He sits on the closed toilet lid while Dan brushes his teeth; when he finishes brushing his own, Dan is standing by the open door of his bedroom.
"Got everything you need?" asks Duck.
"Yeah," Dan says, then: "This is your room, isn't it."
He shrugs. "I figured you'd want your own."
"Actually," says Dan, twining a hand in the corners of the towel where they meet around his waist. He looks down at the floor, then back at Duck. "I don't, really. If you don't mind."
"I don't mind," Duck says, smiling, and he follows Dan in.
Epilogue
Sometimes Dan looks back at his life and wonders how it all fits together, how he got from there to here. His older brother's life is like a straight line, moving from one goal to the next in precise order: secondary school, university, job, marriage, children. Everything anticipated, expected, on schedule.
But his own life has been the staggering walk of a drunkard, and it's as though he can reach out and touch each nexus where his course suddenly stopped and looped back on itself. And each time he thought, yeah, now I'm going in the right direction; and each time he was wrong.
Except this time, maybe. A week after Duck had fetched him from the hospital Dan had hesitantly suggested that he get an apartment, and Duck had just shrugged and said, "No trouble if you want to stay." A couple weeks later he'd mentioned it again, and again after it had been a month, and then he let it drop; now, even though they'd never really discussed it, it was just understood that he wasn't going anywhere. He'd helped Duck move his old bed back into the attic, because the small room wasn't big enough for the bed and all of Duck's painting things, and nobody was sleeping in it anyway. Funny how reassuring it was to have another body in the bed, even if you weren't touching. Just knowing Duck was there, strong and quiet, was enough.
Duck was there when he re-opened the video store, opening boxes and putting the tapes back on the shelves. Duck was there when he finally called Carol French and told her to go ahead and sell the house, to send the money to Val like he'd asked her before. It had been mostly her money in the first place that had bought it, and there was something freeing in letting it go. He supposed that was what he'd been after in the first place, when he'd tried to…to let everything go. But instead of ending, his life had spun around and set off in another direction, because - because Duck had been there.
Because Duck had been here, thinks Dan as he leans against the metal framework of the bridge, the bridge he hadn't thrown himself from, after all. He pulls his coat around him a little tighter, against the sharp bite of the chill late-autumn wind. He's watching Duck take photographs of the bridge and the water flowing under it, trees and rocks and the fallen red and yellow leaves on the bank, photos that will become paintings eventually. Duck painted the river a lot, which struck Dan as odd.
"I like the way the water flows," Duck had said. "It's hard to get it just right."
Dan had shaken his head and laughed. "You live on an island, but you never paint the ocean. Just the river."
"Ocean doesn't go anywhere. The river does."
Dan tosses a stick into the river and watches it move downstream; it gets caught in an eddy and backtracks for a moment, then slides out from behind a rock and continues on its way. At this tide the river is flowing northeast, the long way to the ocean, and he wonders if the stick will make it all the way out the other side of the island before the tide reverses and sends it back.
He's watching the stick as it floats out of sight, so he doesn't see Duck clamber up the bank and come up behind him until he's there, a warm presence barely touching him, but that's enough. "I'm done," says Duck, and they get back into Dan's car and drive home.
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http://hieroglyfics.net/still.htm | written February 2006 by Isis