Gail stumbled over the rocks, looking back at Joel for as long as she could. Soon he and the animal he sat on were just dim shapes in the fog, which drifted in damp sheets, so white it made Gail think of the veils that brides wore. When he disappeared, she turned away, blinking at tears, her throat tight.
It was farther back to the house than she remembered. The pack of them—four small children and one twelve-year-old—followed the meandering course of the narrow beach, by the silver water of Lake Champlain. Gail looked at her feet, watched the water slop gently over the pebbles.
They continued along the embankment, until they reached the dock, their father’s dinghy tied up to it. Heather let go of Gail then, and each of them climbed up onto the pine boards. Gail did not try to run back. It was important to bring their mother, and she thought if she cried hard enough, she could manage it.
The children were halfway across the yard when they heard the foghorn sound again. Only it wasn’t a foghorn and it was close, somewhere just out of sight in the mist on the lake. It was a long, anguished, bovine sound, a sort of thunderous lowing, loud enough to make the individual droplets of mist quiver in the air. The sound of it brought back the crawling-ants feeling on Gail’s scalp and chest. When she looked back at the dock, she saw her father’s boat galumphing heavily up and down in the water and banging against the wood, rocking in a sudden wake.
“What was that?” Heather cried out.
Mindy and Miriam held each other, staring with fright at the lake. Ben Quarrel’s eyes were wide and his head cocked to one side, listening with a nervous intensity.
Back down the beach, Gail heard Joel shout something. She thought—but she was never sure—that he shouted, “Gail! Come see!” In later years, though, she sometimes had the wretched idea that it had been “God! Help me!”
The mist distorted sound, much as it distorted the light. So when there came a great splash, it was hard to judge the size of the thing making the splashing sound. It was as if a bathtub had been dropped from a great height into the lake. Or a car. It was, anyway, a great splash.
“What was that?” Heather screamed again, holding her stomach as if she had a bellyache.
Gail began to run. She leaped the embankment and hit the beach and fell to her knees. Only the beach was gone. Waves splashed in, foot-high waves like you would see at the ocean, not on Lake Champlain. They drowned the narrow strip of pebbles and sand, running right up to the embankment. She remembered how on the walk back the water had been lapping gently at the shore, leaving room for Heather and Gail to walk side by side without getting their feet wet.
She ran into the cold, blowing vapor, shouting Joel’s name. As hard as she ran, she felt she was not going nearly fast enough. She almost ran past the spot where the carcass had been. It wasn’t there anymore, and in the mist, with the water surging up around her bare feet, it was hard to tell one stretch of beach from another.
But she spotted Heather’s drawing pad, sloshing in on the combers, soaked through, pages tumbling. Gail caught in place and stared out at the plunging waves and tormented water. She had a stitch in her side. Her lungs struggled for air. When the waves drew back, she could see where the carcass had been hauled through the hard dirt, pulled into the water, going home. It looked as if someone had dragged a plow-blade across the beach and into the lake.
“Joel!”
She shouted at the water. She turned and shouted up the embankment, into the trees, toward Joel’s house.
“Joel!”
She spun in a circle, shouting his name. She didn’t want to look at the lake but wound up turned to face it again anyway. Her throat burned from yelling, and she was beginning to cry again.
“Gail!” Heather called to her. Her voice was shrill with fright. “Come home, Gail! Come home, right now!”
“Gail!” yelled Gail’s mother.
“Joel!” Gail shouted, thinking this was ridiculous, everyone shouting for everyone else.
The lowing sound came from a long way off. It was mournful and soft.
“Give him back,” Gail whispered. “Please give him back.”
Heather ran through the mist. She was up on the embankment, not down on