Dominion

Father & Son

In the way some people may pay close attention to a framed oil painting on a museum wall, Havel minds a gutted crab halfway buried in the sand. He wonders about its intestines or how its legs were connected.

"You think a bird got it?" Havel asks Jack, who wades around on the immediate shoreline.

"Yeah, or a squid — or something."

"Squids eat crabs?" Havel asks.

"Yeah, they grab 'em with their arms and smash them against their beak to suck out all their insides!" Jack says.

"Squids have beaks?" Marie asks, sitting in the sand with her legs out, building a sandcastle between them.

"You bet," Jack says, feeling smart.

The heat of the sun is at a daily peak.

Jack watches the ocean. He walks into the nearly clear water, leaving his siblings behind on the beach. If he stands still in the suds of a past wave, he can see small fish braving the water near his skinny freckled legs. He heard his dead mother had similar freckles. The waves rise up Jack's body and soon consume his elbows, saving him from the heat. He is struck by a wave that captures him in its barrel, throwing him around like a doll in a washing machine. For a moment Jack is gone, only to erupt gasping for air like a gannet who dove too deep. Havel runs out and tries to help Jack to the shore, but Jack shakes out of Havel's grip and walks onto the beach by himself, falling into the dry sand.

"What's that?" Marie asks, studying something in the sky above the jungle.

"What's what?" Jack asks as he turns to see.

Over the jungle, a smokestack streams into the sky from the center of the island like it had when they first arrived.

"Looks like smoke," Havel says.

"I saw it from the boat, too," Marie says. "Should we tell Grandpa there's a fire?"

They group loosely outside the reach of the waves.

"Yeah, let's go tell him," Jack says, with his back carrying a heavy coat of sand from when he had laid down.

They trek together along the beach, passing by MaryAnn, who sits on a reclined beach chair soaking in the sun. She wears thick, black sunglasses and her yellow/white polka-dot, one-piece swimsuit.

"Where are you going?" she asks them, lowering a magazine she has been reading.

"Just inside to see Phineas," Marie answers.

MaryAnn thinks of questioning further but decides against it, bringing the magazine back into view without a word. The kids walk the stairs to the front door and wipe their feet on the doormat before entering.

"Hello there, children, what are you getting into today," Phineas asks as he stands from the leather couch to greet them.

"Hello, Grandpa," they say, almost in unison.

Jack pushes to the front of his siblings.

"There's a fire in the jungle! We can see smoke," Jack tells him.

Phineas looks away, deadpan. He shakes his head and smiles falsely like an angry preschool teacher. He holds this look awkwardly as he talks.

"When the sun is scorching, sometimes it can start small wildfires. Today is a particularly hot day, so I am not surprised," he tells them. "It won't last long, though. They never do."

He stares at them, still smiling—waiting for some kind of signal to show they were satisfied.

"Oh, okay. We just wanted to let you know," Jack says, breaking a silence.