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The fog shifted. And a stand of crooked trees came into view. With one that, from a certain angle, looked like a pig flying a kite. With some familiar gray pilings just beyond it.
Somehow, I couldn’t find it in me to be surprised.
“Now what?” Shane asked. “When the boat comes ’round again, even if we did want to board it, I don’t have the fare.”
His coin weighed on me like a bullet lodged too close to the heart for a surgeon to cut out. “Fuck the fare. There’s two of us and one of him.”
“Oh my god. You want tocarjackthe boat?”
“You got a look at the creep on the tiller, same as me. He’s not gonna do us any favors.”
“No, I suppose he won’t.” Shane screwed up his face, then scrubbed at his eyes and sighed. “I just thought there’d be more time.”
“Time to what?”
“If not to earn my way into heaven…at least avoid a trip down below.”
“Now you’re just talking stupid.”
A dry laugh. “You’re definitely not the first to say so.”
“Listen to me.” I grabbed Shane by the upper arms and made him meet my eyes. “You’re coming down, and I took a knock on the head. We’re just turned around, is all. And once we get our bearings, it’s good riddance to that boatandthe asshole steering it.”
Shane patted me on the hip, then eased himself out of my grasp. “Whatever you need to tell yourself. But I, for one, know exactly where we—”
“Don’t say it.”
The kid smiled at me and I suddenly had a sense of how he might’ve been with his friends—pure. Not drug friends, but real friends. Or maybe his sister, if she’d never taken that stupid January swim.
And then he said, “Egypt.”
I narrowed my eyes.
“We’re in Egypt. Because yonder river,” Shane gestured dramatically, “is obviously DeNile.”
Before I could tell him to shut up and walk, something caught my eye from the mucky sand at the river’s edge. A glint of light—some trick, when everything else was lost in a murky haze. “Hold on.” I wrangled Shane out in front of me and walked him to the water.
As we approached, even though it was mostly buried, I immediately recognized the thing for what it was.
Another bottle.
Or, more precisely….
“Another…cruet?” Shane froze in his tracks, and despite my hand on his back urging him on, he wasn’t about to budge. And the look in his eyes….
“What is it?” I asked him. “The matching bottle—the one that broke when you were a kid?”
He answered with a head-shake that was more like a couple of sudden jerks. “No. It’s a different type of cruet.” How many typeswerethere? “This one’s not for the dinner table—it’s for Holy Communion.”
I’ve never been much for church, but Ma was a big believer. No idea why. Maybe because the priests claimed that heaven would make up for whatever suffering she endured—all while they were waving a collection plate under her nose. My old man had no use for ’em. Said they were a bunch of hypocrites. But he never forbade her from going—just in case God really did exist.
You never can tell who’s gonna find religion. Take Carmine Rossi. Church every Sunday, rain or shine. And the priests not only absolve him of his sins, they practically kiss his ass over the big checks he writes to the parish.
Pains me to say it, but maybe my old man was onto something.
Guess Shane had more church in him than I did, what with the Catholic school and all, so he had to be curious what the latest bottle was all about. Which made the whole situation even more confusing when he turned on his heel and walked away.
“Shane—” I called after him, and he completely ignored me. “Shane!” He’d moved fast, with big strides, and my head gave a queasy throb as I jogged to catch up to him. “What, you’re just gonna leave it there?”
