81

They were far, far out, dangerously far if you wanted to think of it that way, and even the few lights of Westish that pricked the distance seemed on the point of vanishing. Mike, who’d been doing the heavy rowing, grimacing in pain all the while, stopped and raised his oars from the water. Henry, behind him in the bow seat, did the same. The creak of the rowlocks ceased, as did the steady slosh of the blades, and all that remained was the slap of waves at the rowboat’s hull, the black sky all around.

Pella sat in the stern, Westish at her back, the lake ahead, though most of what she could see was Mike’s sweat-drenched chest, the shrug and drop of his big shoulders as he tried to catch his breath. What a face, she thought. Let it never be bearded again.

Alone at the prow sat Owen, his back to the rest of them. He looked out at the dark water, a hand laid softly on the material of the bag in which Pella’s father lay.

They were drifting now, the rowboat’s nose tacking softly to port, to the north. It was time, and Mike was looking at her, waiting for her to say that it was time, but even though it was her dad and her idea, she realized that she was waiting for Owen. Owen would know what to do. She found a warm can of beer beneath her seat—they’d brought the beers but not the cooler—and cracked it and handed it to Mike. Mike handed that one to Henry, and she found another.

Finally Owen turned around. He was wearing his Westish cap with the harpoon-skewered W, and behind the weak beam that streamed from his reading light his face was wet. He smiled, looked at Pella. “Would it be all right if I said something?”

They rearranged themselves, Owen and Henry on one bench, Pella and Mike on the opposite one, her dad in between. Owen passed the bottle of scotch.

“Perhaps we should bow our heads,” Owen said. “Don’t worry. I won’t invoke any bread-based religions.”

They bowed their heads. The beam of Owen’s reading light passed over each of them, settled on the navy vinyl bag at their feet. “Guert,” he began.

“At risk of becoming sentimental, let me say that you’ve been integral to my life for a long time. I read your book when I was fourteen, and it bolstered my courage at a moment when my courage was required.

“When we met, three years ago, it was because you selected me for the Maria Westish Award—another reason I’ll always be grateful to you. Because barring that I would never have come to Westish, and I would never have met the people who are with me now. My own dear friends, as the poet said.

“But it wasn’t until a short time ago that you and I became friends. And of course I regret that our time, your time, was so short.”

Owen’s voice wavered. He closed his eyes, opened them again.

“You told me once that a soul isn’t something a person is born with but something that must be built, by effort and error, study and love. And you did that with more dedication than most, that work of building a soul—not for your own benefit but for the benefit of those who knew you.

“Which is partly why your death is so hard for us. It’s hard to accept that a soul like yours, which took a lifetime to build, could cease to exist. It makes us angry, furious at the universe, not to have you here.

“But of course your soul does exist, Guert, because you gave of it so unstintingly. It exists in your book, and in this school, and also in each of us. For that we’ll always be grateful.” Owen looked up, lifting the beam of his reading light. It passed over each of them again. He smiled. “And we miss your corporal form, which was also nice.”

Pella was weeping like crazy, as quietly as she could. That stuff about making a soul—she wondered whether her dad had really said it, or whether Owen had derived it himself, as a sort of synthesis of what her dad believed. Either way it was remarkable, and she glimpsed for the first time how close they were, how their relationship may not have been a static, one-sided kind of smitten worship, as she’d lazily imagined it, but a real and powerful thing.

She was shivering, and Mike put his arm around her. Despite the appalling heat of the day before and the day to come, despite the heat of the scotch she’d been drinking and drinking, both from Owen’s bottle and her own flask, the four a.m. breeze that came over the water felt cutting and frigid. It was time for her to say something, to do right by her father somehow, but it was impossible, there was too much to say and no way to say it.

Owen reached across and handed her something. A piece of paper, folded into quarters. She unfolded it, but it was too dark to see.

“Here.” Owen took off his Harpooners cap and, as Pella leaned forward, placed it on her head. In the beam of the battery-powered light she could see what he’d handed her: a typed copy of “The Lee Shore,” the short chapter of Moby-Dick that was her father’s favorite piece of writing, the source of his old password, and, not incidentally, the poetic epitaph of a brave and handsome man.

She’d known it by heart since she was six, and once she’d started she didn’t need the page. When her dad recited it in lecture he did so with a stage actor’s vigor, shouting his way through the exclamation points, as if to remind the students that old books contained strong feelings. She couldn’t do that now, but in a hushed way she tried to do the passage justice. Mike squeezed her hand.

When she’d finished, Mike took a pair of scissors from his pocket and cut slits in the bag, so that it would fill with water and sink. He and Henry knelt beside the body, cradled its length with both arms, and, very slowly so as not to capsize them all, scooped Affenlight up and over the side.