Free Freewill by Chris Lynch Page B

pull of the water is so strong, can you conceive of anybody, any of us, daring to resist it?
    Are we meant to resist, do you suppose?
    She is searching for words. The words are all there, why does anyone need to search for them? She is being careful.
    You assist. “Morbid curiosity?” you say.
    You understand morbid curiosity, do you not? Why do you understand that, Will, when you understand so little of people and life and the way people live life?
    â€œNo,” she answers too emphatically.
    â€œI don’t mind,” you say. “I’m curious myself.”
    â€œNo,” she says.
    But you cannot believe her, and you cannot get worked up about it either.
    Even if she’s here for the show. At least she’s here.
    â€œYou want to help?” you ask, falling to your knees and digging like a dog.
    She does. She drops next to you and in a couple of minutes you have a pile of solid wet sand between you anda compact medium-deep hole in front of you.
    â€œSo I’m the freak here, is that what you’re saying?” she asks.
    â€œYa,” you say evenly. “But I can live it with it if you can.”
    She stares at you, tilts her head quizzically, then smiles cautiously. “Right, so you do have a sense of humor after all.”
    What sense of humor?
    â€œThis is what you want to do with it?” Angela asks, pointing at the hole.
    You nod. “Feels right,” you say, plunging the base of the sculpture into the sand like the marines on Iwo Jima. Together you and she pack the sand tight all around it, so that even this wind will not tip it. And you know, because you know, that the tide cannot reach it no matter how it tries.
    Together the two of you walk back up the beach, and turn to survey. The low sun is at your back, and the wood looks so perfect, so warm in orange light against the ocean backing, it’s as if it has grown there, up out of the ground, rather than having been jammed in there by you.
    It is right. So little ever truly is.
    Angela puts a hand flat on your back.
    â€œSo,” she says, “see you at the shop tomorrow.” It is not at all a question.
    â€œSee me at the shop tomorrow.” It is not at all a lie, as far as you can tell.

CHARITY
    Good morning.
    Listen to it, Will. I think you ought to listen to this one. First, you are doing the quasi-school thing again. You promised.
    Second. Well, second you ought to listen, is all.
    â€œTwo more. The third and fourth of the town’s tragic roster of teenage suicide victims were found last night drowned in the bay. The couple, local high-schoolers, were said to be a popular, sociable pair who had not exhibited signs of the problems normally associated with teenagers in trouble. They were found after a desperate all-night search after they failed to arrive home as expected last evening. Searchers were alerted to the scene by a sort of totem, planted into the sandat the approximate location on the beach where they were thought to have entered the water. Police are investigating whether the couple themselves or someone else had planted the wooden marker.”
    Rise and shine.
    â€œNo,” you say. “No, no, no, no.”
    But that doesn’t help anything, does it? What’s done is done. It is not your fault.
    â€œNo.”
    That was not what you intended. You cannot allow yourself—
    â€œNo!”
    Gran rushes into your room, without even knocking. That has never happened before. But she has probably already been up, waiting, for an hour now. Bad enough. Bad enough, the usual reports. Bad enough, the routine day-to-day that she suspects you are not capable of navigating.
    But this. Nobody is ready for this. Not on your beach. By your monument.
    â€œIt’s all right, Will, it’s all right,” she says, sitting on the side of your bed and trying to get a loving, grandmotherly grip on you.
    â€œHow can that be all right?” you demand. You hop off the