Free A Private State: Stories by Charlotte Bacon Page B

aloud. He just read my note in the beach. "You sure?" I nodded again, and he walked back to his friends. But he was by himself. It was just that he was thin and hungry.
I picked my way back to the Doctor. It rattled him, the sand, the cuts, something else I couldn't see. Maybe he'd hoped I was too big to get hurt anymore. Maybe he didn't like it that he still had to watch for me. I cried then, shaking, nearly soundless, the way I cried when I was lost on a beach in a state I didn't remember and for once they'd both been worried sick. "Honey," he said, over and over, fingers dusting the sand from my back, as if I were something he could break if he weren't careful.
My father said he was sorry he had to go to the hospital and I believed him. He'd cleaned my scrapes, made me tuna sandwiches, and kissed my rough hair. There was an experimental lightness to his walk. The moths were late. I wondered if it was because we'd sent the last boxes. I wondered if it was because I'd been deeply tumbled in the North Atlantic.
Then I heard the gate creak and saw Jake and his long shadow standing there. I hadn't realized he knew where we lived, but that was how towns were. If you stayed long enough, people did know things, for better or for worse. "Can I come in?" he said. He waited 'til I waved to open the door. "You're not talking, right? That's what Mr. Dusseault said." I nodded and coughed, ocean still in my lungs. His hair was wet. A part sang down his scalp. At least we were both clean this time.

 

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"You got wrecked out there," he said. I shrugged, but I wanted to say, "Not wrecked ; just a little roughed up." I hadn't broken any bones or knocked out teeth, had I? I was still whole, wasn't I? Besides, it wasn't personal. Oceans were just that way.
Jake wandered up to Louis and gently touched his ribs. "This is weird, your skeleton on the porch." I pointed to a chair across from me. He sat down and said, "He's missing some metatarsals." I offered him my iced tea. He sipped it. "That's good,'' he said and that was all for a bit. We sat there, listening to mosquitoes, cats, and sprinklers. He was easy with quiet; it had a curvy softness to it when he was around. It was better than words and so I was surprised when he asked, just as it was getting dark, "You go to the beach a lot this summer?" I shook my head. "Me neither; we were out West the whole time. My Dad and I spent a week in the Grand Canyon. You've got to move carefully in there.''
I had already broken my vow. Still it surprised me how nice it felt to take that black marker and print "Why?" in block letters. I could have written all night; there were rolls of paper and jars of pens left over from wrapping Naomi's stuff. I slid my note to Jake.
"Why," he read. "Because it's so big that even little sounds pop these big echoes. It was great but I was glad we were coming back." He looked away then, a little shy. Even when a place was home it wasn't simple. Things were always shifting.
I had questions, I realized. Did his father know Naomi was in Omaha? Then it struck me I didn't know what had happened to Jake's mother. Where was she? I was tired all over. I wasn't ready for this. One word, one thought led to another and then another, a long thick wave of them you had to ride.
Then Jake said, more to the twilight than to me, "I've been wondering something. What happened to Mr. Dusseault's thumb? Where'd they put it?" I hadn't thought about that. I wrote another scrap, "Ask him?"
Jake leaned close to read this next note. "How could you ask

 

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someone something like that?" Monsieur, I wanted to say, could stand strange questions. In fact, it would be good to ask him. He'd lost a critical piece, but it hadn't made him run.
The wind was blowing harder now. Louis clanked on his metal pole. He was going to drop a pin in his knee quite soon. Even the springs spanning the plates of his skull were starting to stretch. "Chloe?" Jake said. Hearing him say my name shook me as