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  For Ishy, the very best good boy

  I

  The dog shows up at the mint-green house on the edge of the woods a month before the monster arrives, his coat shiny as a new copper penny. Right away, the boy knows he’s special, even though his mother says all dogs make you feel that way. She stands back, an arm crossed over her chest, chewing a thumbnail as she watches the boy and his father both kneeling in the grass of the front yard, petting the animal. He runs his fingers through the dog’s long fur and rubs his soft ears, the shape and size of him reminding the boy of a friend’s golden retriever. The dog’s tail beats the ground as he pants and smiles, eyes half-closed like this is the most blissful thing ever.

  “He probably belongs to someone,” she says, speaking around the tip of her thumb.

  “He doesn’t have a collar,” his father says, “and he’s pretty skinny.” He leaves the boy and dog in the grass and wraps his arms around his wife from behind, hugging her close. “You’re eating your nail polish again.” His father begins swaying side to side just a little, murmuring into her hair, and his mother shrugs. He smirks and walks two fingers up her arm. She catches his hand before he can tickle her and turns her head, trying not to smile.

  “We’ll put an ad in the paper,” his father says.

  They wait a week, then two. But no one claims the dog, and finally his mother acquiesces. They name him Teach—after the boy’s favorite pirate—because his father says they can’t call him Blackbeard on account of his red fur, and those weeks before life upends are nearly perfect.

  The boy and Teach spend early summer evenings playing baseball in the field by the waterway—the boy always playing third base just like his dad on the Charleston RiverDogs—and being pirates down by the cave on the beach, burying treasure and avoiding the dark where they’re not allowed.

  At home, they lie stretched underneath the table, the smell of chicken and pineapple wafting from the oven. His father and mother dance around the kitchen to Glenn Miller on his father’s record player. His mother smiles open-mouthed, lips scarlet red, her curling hair black and shiny. His father, slim and angular with a cleft in his chin and bright, intelligent eyes, brushes his hand over her back as he crosses behind her, resting it on her shoulder as he stirs one of the pots and she slices the bread. They’re movie stars in black and white, a full - orchestra - in - the - background kind of pretty.

  At night, the boy’s mother tucks him into bed beneath the Jolly Roger hanging on his wall. He can smell Ivory soap on her hands—crisp and clean as she smooths the covers around him. She tells him she’s writing a new book, about the pirate Madame Cheng, and he pictures his mother leading the Red Flag Fleet against the Portuguese, refusing to stand down.

  And in the night, before they sleep, he presses his lips to Teach’s silken ear and tells him secrets—like the bottle rocket hidden under his bed—knowing they’re safe. And Teach, sometimes, tells him some back.

  * * *

  When the boy’s grandfather rolls down the gravel drive in the station wagon, its wooden side panels rattling, he brings something with him. It’s in his mother’s odd, closed-mouth smile and his father’s confused glances. It’s in the shaking under his fingers when Teach growls at the man who climbs out of the car.

  The family leaves the porch with the hollow thwack of wood against wood, the screen door bouncing shut behind them. In the gray area between the electric light at the edge of the house and the dark of night, the raccoon sneaking into the outdoor shower retreats, back hunched as he runs.

  The old man stands, tall and barrel-chested, his shoulders straight and strong, his unlined face topped by a shiny bald head. He looks less like a grandfather and more like the man on the bottle of cleaner the boy’s mother uses to mop the floor. But the old man’s eyes, those are unmistakable—they’re the same deep, turbulent blue as his mother’s, as his own.

  They stand in an uneven huddle, the cicadas’ song swelling around them as the insects devour their way down the coast.

  It’s the old man’s shoes that catch the boy’s attention. The black dress shoes are caked with sand, their hard edges digging into the naked, fleshy roll around the old man’s ankle. They don’t match the board shorts and faded Ron Jon T-shirt he’s wearing. He reminds the boy of the men and women they see along King Street with their knapsacks and cardboard signs, the ones his mother hurries him past.

  The old man’s smile is brilliant, eyes bright as the South Carolina sun.

  “Dad?” the boy’s mother asks.

  The old man pulls her into a hug, chin resting on her shoulder. His mother’s hands flutter over the old man’s back before landing and she wrinkles her nose. The boy has seen this look on her face before, mostly in the kitchen when she peels back a corn husk to find a worm inside, but also when she’s bent over her books, notes scattered around her as she looks for something she needs.

  The hug runs long, and his mother’s hands keep lifting from his back as she stands, bent into the hug, the old man’s arms crumpling her into a new and uncomfortable shape. As soon as she puts her hands on his shoulders and starts pushing away, the boy’s father slips an arm around her waist, pulling her back as he sticks his other hand out.

  “It’s nice to meet you.”

  His father’s words drawl smooth and elegant in a way his mother calls genteel. She tries to emulate it sometimes, making the boy laugh and his father groan and try to hide his smile.

  “Stop,” he’ll say. “That’s awful.” And then she laughs too.

  But the old man ignores the offered hand, staring at the boy instead. There’s a looseness to his eyes that bothers the boy, the way they push up against his eyelids.

  “Married a Southern boy, I see,” his grandfather says.

  The summer night feels heavy, and the boy fidgets under his long gaze, searching for a bit of air to dry the dampness from his skin. “Where are you from?”

  The old man laughs, a full belly laugh with his mouth wide open. The boy stares. He’s never seen anyone with a tongue and throat so white.

  “Oh I like you,” the old man says.

  His father drops his hand to his side. “Mr. Franklin—”

  His grandfather’s gaze snaps to the boy’s father. “That’s not my name.” He nods his head at the boy’s mother. “Not her name either.”

  Teach grumbles at the boy’s side.

  There’s a long moment, the boy’s fingers caught in Teach’s fur, and then the old man finally sticks his hand out. “Sorry about that. Getting old and my eyesight’s not so good in the dark.”

  His father hesitates before taking the old man’s hand, the muscle in his jaw twitching.

  “Sure. Yeah, sure. Nice to meet you, Mr. . . .”

  The old man’s smile makes the boy uneasy, though he doesn’t know why.

  The conversation comes like the stirring of thick marsh water when something ancient and slow moves at its bottom. The boy slips away, skimming his hand along the side of the station wagon until he gets to the back. The car is dirty, like someone raced it up and down the back roads between the cotton and peanut fields. The boy drags his finger through the dust on the window, first drawing his name and then sketching a picture of Teach. The light shines through the window into the back and the boy catches sight of a surfboard fin, the board stretching across the top of the back seat.

  Pressing his nose to the glass, hands cupped around his eyes, he peers inside, looking for a suitcase or maybe a duffel like his father carries on field trips, but there’s no luggage. Just the surfboard and a short wet suit. There’s a large irregular lump beneath the neoprene, the board’s Velcro ankle strap stuck to a patch of carpet. He continues around the car, brushing the edge of darkness as he tries to get a better angle, but from there he can only see a baby’s car seat. The front of the car is littered with fast-food bags, the passenger seat full of those little salt packs they give you at the drive-through.

  He takes Teach’s collar, pulling gently as he starts back toward his parents, but draws up short as the old man steps in front of him.

  “Hey there. Give your grandfather a hug.”

  The boy has the same nose wrinkle as his mother, though it has less to do with worms and more to do with hugging.

  When the old man’s too-soft arm brushes along his cheek, he smells low tide and fresh bait. He takes the boy’s chin, turning his face one way and then another before using his thumb to lift the boy’s eyelid, making his eye water, and the boy steps back, turning his head away.

  His mother grabs his shoulders, pulling him back against her. He tries to squirm away, but she grips tight, pinching.

  “Where’ve you been, Dad?”

  His grandfather pats his tummy, scratching through the T-shirt. “Been serving as ship’s cook, but that’s a story for later. Invite me in for a cup of coffee.”

  And just like that, his grandfather pushes his way into their lives.

  * * *

  The next day, Teach and the boy sit under the mossy trees sharing a thermos of Tang and a cheese and brown sugar sandwich, the world hot, insects buzzing around them. The old man spots them while coming up from the beach, bent as if he carries the heat on his back. Teach sits up from his lazy sprawl and rumbles a deep and rusty growl.

  Standing before them, backlit by the sun, the old man looks dark and endlessly hollow. He sits by the boy, sagging into the shade, shirtless, his face tan and smoother than the boy’s—every bit of personality scoured away. He’s still wearing his dress shoes and they look even weirder now that he’s shirtless. The boy’s hands twitch, fingers digging into his sandwich with the urge to reach out and pinch the roll of flesh above the top of the old man’s shoes.

  The boy parses the way his grandfather smacks a mosquito away, the way he leans back on his hands and stretches his legs out, the tips of his shoes in the sun still. He catalogs the old man’s blunt, worn fingers and the tilt of his mouth looking for his mother’s long silences and her wide, pretty smile, or his own constellation of freckles and the gap between his front teeth.

  “Eating lunch?” his grandfather asks.

  “Yes, sir.”

  The old man pulls a seashell from his pocket, rolling it between his fingers, pausing to trace the whorls and ridges with his thumb. His grandfather seems to catalog him, too, gaze roving from the riot of hair on the boy’s head down to his hands then back up over his skinny chest and knobby collarbones. The boy waits—polite, like he was taught—but his grandfather doesn’t say anything else, so he asks the most important question first.

  “What’s it like being a ship’s cook?”

  The question seems to delight the old man. He puts his hand on the boy’s shoulder, jostling him, and Teach goes stiff at the boy’s side.

  “Mostly it’s no good. You’re always down in the belly of the ship, where you can’t even smell the ocean or taste the salt on the air.”

  The hand feels hot on his shoulder, even through his shirt.

  “What’s your mother feeding you?”

  “Sandwich.” The boy shows him the filling.

  His grandfather’s whole face crinkles into harsh lines.

  “No wonder you’re scrawny.”

  “It’s my favorite.”

  The boy starts to look down at his sandwich, but his grandfather ducks his head, holding eye contact so he can’t look away.

  “Your favorite, huh? What else do you like to eat?”

  “Pizza and macaroni and spinach balls.”

  “Spinach balls?” The old man frowns. “You don’t like hamburgers and hot dogs?”

  The boy shrugs. “Yeah, they’re okay.”

  His grandfather leans in close and the boy scrunches his face in anticipation of a kiss to his head but it never comes, though he feels the brush of something against his hair. The boy stills and Teach shifts, the fur on the dog’s lower legs stiff—almost sharp—against his knee. The old man backs off and pats his other shoulder.

  “Well . . . you’re young yet. You’ll grow into your taste buds.”

  The boy runs a hand through his hair, checking if the old man put something in it, but it’s just his hair, stiff with dried saltwater. He shrugs, hoping to dislodge his grandfather’s hand, and when that doesn’t work, he drops his shoulder. But the hand lays against him limp as seaweed.

  The old man’s eyes gleam bright as midday sun on water. “Something wrong?”

  “No, sir.”

  His grandfather stares at him, unblinking, the shell in the old man’s hand constantly moving, his smile wide and white. The boy shifts in the grass, nudging Teach over and looks toward the house, but the afternoon is still, the door and the windows closed against the heat.

  “You like to swim, I bet,” his grandfather says.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Like to dive down deep?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “We’ll have to go swimming together.”

  The boy picks at the crust on his sandwich, rolling it into little pills, brown sugar dropping onto his shorts. It reminds him of the way his grandfather rolls the shell between his fingers.

  The old man’s station wagon sits alone in the drive, the sun reflecting off the chrome bumper.

  “Will you teach me to surf?” the boy asks.

  The old man blinks at him. “Surf? Don’t know how to surf. Maybe you can teach me.”

  “But I just asked you to teach me.”

  “Well, that’s a conundrum, isn’t it? I guess we’ll just have to teach each other.”

  The boy looks back at the station wagon. “Why do you have a surfboard if you don’t surf?”

  The grandfather shrugs. “It’s not mine. You have a girlfriend?”

  “Ew. No.”

  He picks the crust off his sandwich, feeding it to Teach. “Who does it belong to?”

  “Nobody you know.”

  “Oh.” The boy looks down, watching an ant crawl through the grass.

  “That Jolly Roger hanging over your bed, that’s like your mom, you know, always interested in pirates.”

  He wipes dog drool on his swim trunks. “Yeah. She tells the best stories.”

  A serpentine warmth trails down his spine, making him shiver, but when he reaches back there’s nothing there.

  “Yeah? What kind of stories?”

  He shrugs again. “Like Madame Cheng.”

  “Madame Cheng?”

  “She led the Red Flag Fleet after her husband died.”

  His grandfather snorts. “Sure.”

  His father says if he can’t understand a problem, it might be a proximity issue, that he might need to get some distance from it, and if that doesn’t work, get closer to it. His grandfather sits right there—almost on top of him—and is still confusing.

  “Pirates were real big on loyalty. You know what happened when someone wasn’t loyal?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Well, if they didn’t outright kill you, they’d maroon you. And Old Bart, sometimes he’d slit your nose and ears first.”

  The boy imagines marooning Leonard, a boy in his class, maybe during recess—tattlers definitely lack loyalty—but he’s not sure where they’d put him, and he’d just tell on them anyway.

  The old man moves his feet, the hard soles on his shoes tap, tap, tapping as he brings the toes together.

  “Are you homeless?” the boy asks.

  The shell stills in his grandfather’s hand, his gaze jerking from Teach to the boy. “Is that what your mother told you?”

  The boy leans away. “No.”

  His grandfather narrows his eyes and gestures toward the house with his chin, the nod sharp and tight. “She’s a regular jawfish, ain’t she? Miss Polly Perfect. Hanging her laundry on the line out back. Sweeping the porch. I bet she bakes, doesn’t she. She bake apple pies? Peach?”

  The boy leans into Teach, the sandwich gripped in his fist, palm sticky, gnats flitting around the warm brown sugar. Teach stretches forward, nose quivering in the air.

  Usually, it’s his father who does the baking. He doesn’t know why, but he doesn’t say that.

  The shell disappears into his grandfather’s fist, his knuckles going white as he squeezes. The sun changes angle, the light hitting his grandfather so he almost glows.

  The boy shifts to get up, sandwich crumpled on the ground already swarming with ants. The old man clamps his hand back down on his shoulder, keeping him still.

  “Now don’t go running off. You’ve got a whole childhood on me.”

  Teach bares his teeth, upper lip quivering as he inches forward until his front paws rest on the ground between the boy’s legs, and the old man glares at the dog.

  “That dog has a temper.”

  Thunder rumbles in the distance and dragonflies flit over the grass.

  The boy wraps an arm around Teach’s neck. “No, sir. Not normally.”

  He’s never noticed before how white the screen door looks or how dark the porch behind the screen seems.

  “It’s going to storm. I should probably go back inside.”

  His grandfather shakes his head. “We got time yet. That storm is still way out over the Atlantic. You know, you look like your mother.”

  The boy frowns down at his lap. Other than the color of his eyes, it’s not true. Not one person has ever said he looks like his mother.

 

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