Galen understood now what he was meant to do tonight. The moonlight a path across the water, the proof, finally, of what he was. He walked toward it, or was walked toward it by the universe. The stream of beautiful sounds, the bubbling and coursing, a voice reassuring, the light soft, and he had lost his feet. They had become one with the light and would cross the surface in the same way that the light lay upon the water.

Galen ecstatic, his entire soul rushing with love. His foot at the surface, cold, the breath of the water, and that was all right, it was happening, but then his foot plunged through and he tilted, trying to keep his palms up, trying to save this, trying not to lose faith. The next step could hold, so he threw his other foot out there, but it plunged, also, and his ankle twisted on rock below and he was falling forward, hit the water face-first in an icy shock, all his air gone. He breathed water and pushed against rock and sand to get up, thrashing with his arms. He was coughing, stumbled and fell again, his ankle twisted and too difficult to stand on, so he propped on his butt and arms and pulled himself backward toward shore. He crawled out of the water and just lay in the dirt. What the fuck, he said. When is it going to happen?

Chapter 12

Galen limped down the road, soaked and shivering and dirty, his wet jeans and sweatshirt heavy, and when he arrived at the cabin he wondered how he’d get in. He wasn’t going in the front door. There was no way he was giving his aunt that satisfaction.

He wouldn’t be able to take a bath, either. It was too late. So his only hope was the stove.

Galen stepped quietly onto the deck, ducked low under the main kitchen window and went around the side, peeked into the smaller window above the sink. He could see his mother and grandmother still sitting at the small yellow table, drinking yellow wine. A second bottle, almost empty. Everything distorted in the old glass of the window, bent, the upper part of a bottle magnified, lower part shrunken. His grandmother’s head too small. Everything yellow, it seemed, even the white-painted walls cast yellow in the light.

It might be a while. They rarely drank, but when they did, it was back to the past. The cases of empty bottles from his grandfather, left outside the pantry door. Galen didn’t have a single memory of him that was without wine, without that smell of Riesling, the only wine he’d drink, a piece of the old country. Galen didn’t know where in Germany his grandfather was from, didn’t know what it looked like, had no idea what his grandfather’s childhood had been. All lost. An illusion anyway, but still, one Galen wanted to know, if only so that his grandfather could make more sense. His grandfather born into this world with a thick finger circling in the air, coming after Galen’s belly, a buzzing sound, his grandfather saying bzz, bzz, bzz, and Galen terrified of that finger. The earliest memory, and of course flooded with the smell of that wine. His grandfather exhaling wine, his teeth dark, the thick hairs in his nostrils dark, trying to play, trying to show something like affection, but he was only terrifying, every part of him, his finger plunging far too hard into Galen’s belly, a roughness to everything he did. Galen didn’t have a single memory of his grandfather that didn’t include fear.

Galen had only one memory, though, of actual violence. His grandfather pulling his grandmother around by her hair on the kitchen floor. Galen had laughed at first, when he ran into the kitchen and found them. It looked like a kind of game, something done for fun, except that the sounds didn’t match that. His mother whisked him away quickly, out of the house, and every other memory that might have been of violence was only of sound and leaving.

Helen was right that men were the problem. Galen’s grandfather the source of everything wrong in this family. But she couldn’t say Galen was the same. That wasn’t fair.

Galen was becoming far too caught up in the illusions. He needed to remember that none of this was real. His grandfather was only a touchstone, a marker, like the old stove or the big rock. Despair, getting depressed about his family, was only a kind of procrastination on the road. It was a refusal to keep moving, a distraction, a lack of courage to face lessons. It could feel real, but it wasn’t real. You could spend an entire life trapped there, as his aunt had done, but that was an easy mistake, a weakness, a waste of an incarnation.

The wall behind the stove had a bit of warmth, even on the outside, so Galen stood flat against it, his cheek on the wood. His wet clothing so heavy and thick his body could warm the inside layer, perhaps, like a wetsuit. He was shaking, though. He just didn’t have any reserves. No fat. He was not good with cold. He was meant to get in and quickly out of this incarnation. Just learn his final lessons and go. His body was not meant to last. Eating and pissing and shitting just a distraction, one he was tired of, his old soul frustrated at having to play the game again.

Galen hugged the cabin wall, tried to imagine his arms wrapping all the way around the entire structure. He waited and waited, desperately cold, and finally the light switched off, the window went dark. His lower jaw like a sewing machine. He waited another few minutes and then walked around back, let himself carefully in the door.

The kitchen air warmer but not as hot as he had hoped, the fire in the stove long since died. He sloughed off his wet clothing into the corner behind the door, then felt his way along the table in the dark, over to the drawers under the sink. Found the matches, lit one and set it on the stove for a light. He would start a new fire. He lifted one of the round burners with the chrome handle, and then the match went out and he was in darkness again. But he could feel hot air from the opening in the stove, and he set the burner carefully to the side, then felt with his hands. The cast iron warm on the surface, hotter still inside, so he bent over, the open hole of hot air at his chest, and hugged the stove. This would be enough. He wouldn’t need a new fire. He felt the breath of the stove warm his chest and his belly, pressed his arms against its dry warm skin until he had stopped shivering and creaked up the stairs to his bed and slid under a pile of blankets. He loved the weight of the blankets, four layers thick, something he had only here at the cabin. He curled into a fetal position, his head ducked under the covers, and felt safe in his nest.

Chapter 13

Galen awoke to the smell of bacon. Deep and beautiful smell, and he felt his hunger, the hollowness inside him. Bacon. There would be pancakes, also, and scrambled eggs. When he smelled the toast, it would be time. His mother trilling in the kitchen, her happy voice. Chatting with his grandmother, and he heard his aunt’s voice, even. A time of peace. A new day.

Galen snuggled in the warmth of his blankets, even though the air had warmed from the stove. He waited until he could smell toast, and then he pulled the blankets aside and reached in his duffel for shorts and a shirt. He had no other pants, unfortunately. Only the jeans that were wet.

Galen, his mother called. She sang it, rising up on the first syllable, falling on the last. Ga-len. A happy time. And he felt willing to go along with it. He came down the stairs and found them all at the table, squeezed into his place and watched his plate fill with two pancakes, eggs, strips of bacon, and toast. A mug of hot chocolate.

Wow, he said.

Brekkie is served, his mother said. Brekkie the way the Schumachers do it.

Galen leaned over his plate and smelled his bacon, deep inhales and closed his eyes. His first meal in what felt like ages. He ate with his bare hands, didn’t want to distance himself with a fork. Kept his face down close, nuzzled the hot pancakes and warm sticky syrup. Tasted the bacon, the smoke and salt and fat and meat, unbelievably good. He was humming, his insides coming alive.