Free Golden Age by Jane Smiley Page B

to ten now). The boat had several levels, and everyone wanted to see the view from the top level—it was sunset, the bay was flat. Michael was sitting on the railing with his feet on a cushion. Admittedly, you were not supposed to sit on the railing—you were supposed to sit on the cushions. The boat shifted, he lost his balance, and the next thing he knew was that he was reaching out to grab a lanyard that was hanging there, but it was attached to nothing, and he toppled over onto a white awning that collapsed underneath him, and then he was caught in the huge arms of the black chef who’d been grilling steaks on the poop deck for the partyers. The chef stood him on his feet. He went back to the bar, got himself another rum punch, and ran up the stairs. When he got there, everyone was gone.
    Here was how Loretta told the story: Michael was smashed to smithereens. When he originally staggered up the steps to the upper deck, he’d been swaying, and Magnus King had made a joke about him. Loretta was embarrassed, and told Michael he needed to taper off; he told her to shut up, jerked backward, and disappeared. The seven of them looked over the railing and didn’t see anything, so they ran down the stairs, but it was a big boat with two sets of stairs, and as they were running down one set, Michael was running up the other set. They searched the lower deck, and then Loretta looked up and saw Michael waving his arm and laughing. She was really happy to see him. But, she said, at that point he had learned nothing.
    The next thing, Michael said, was that when the cruise was over,and they had eaten their steaks and sobered up just a hair, they got so impatient with how slow the barge was that ferried passengers back and forth to the beach that Michael handed Loretta his wallet (as always!) and dove into the water, then Magnus went, then Tyler Coudray, leaving all the wives and Zeke Weiner, poor Zeke.
    Zeke was happy to stay with us, said Loretta—why would he want to ruin his clothes and get wet and cold for nothing? By the time the five of them got to that crappy beach bar, Magnus, Tyler, and Michael were sitting in Buccaneer Cove with their drinks, out of their minds. Tyler threw up right when his wife got there, and the throw-up sort of spread around them and got on Magnus and Michael, and they didn’t even notice. All the wives were pretty fed up, but there was no going home while the Red Stripe beers were being extracted from the ice chest. And it was cold. It was something like California, how cold Antigua got in the middle of the night, and all they had was sweaters.
    The miracle, Michael said, was the bwi dog. Not a big dog, not a little dog; brown with a black face.
    The miracle, said Loretta, was that they got home at all. There was no public transportation by that time, they had to find their way across that isthmus—
    And the dog led them every step of the way, said Michael, down a winding path, through the plants that were growing behind the beach—kassy, it was, prickly and tangled—and the dog just took them. It must have been three miles.
    It seemed like a mile, but probably it was only a hundred yards, at least as the crow flies, said Loretta; if they’d been sober enough to look up rather than at their feet (Michael did fall down—not once, but twice), they would have seen that Dalla left the light on in the second-story window, they could have made it; and thank God they got there before the children woke up, it would have been such an embarrassment, their clothes all torn and covered with dirt and bits of plants; Michael had lost his shoes completely, though Loretta managed to carry hers—they were ruined, though.
    No, said Michael, the miracle was the dog, a dog that gave himself to them, to lead them home, and then lay on the stoop for the rest of the night, even though, when Dalla got up with Chance, Tia, and Binky, she shooed him away.
    And well she should, said Loretta, since there is rabies