by Carrie Mac
We drove to the coast and then turned left, the misty ocean air and crashing waves on the right, the windswept trees leaning away from the weather on the other side. The skies were black and roiling with storm.
I had a satellite picture of the pullout we were looking for.
I kept my finger on the first landmark. A state park.
We zoomed past that, windshield wipers on high.
A creek.
Another creek.
A wayside.
Lighthouse B and B.
The orange bridge.
“There!” I pointed as Pete jammed on the brakes.
A narrow lane off the highway, and then a hill, descending into the dark toward the ocean.
“If we drive down there and it’s flooded or there’s some kind of supertide, we’re screwed.”
“There is a reason why the exhaust is up by the roof.” Pete gunned it so hard that the unicorn bobblehead on the dash flew right off and into the little space behind the seats. He spun to a stop in the middle of a small clearing.
“Now we wait to sink,” I said.
“It’s not quicksand, Banana.”
* * *
—
We were so eager to take Pete’s new truck out that we’d already set up the back for sleeping, so we just hopped in, zipped ourselves into our sleeping bags, and ate the snacks we’d brought while Pete beat me at eight games of Uno.
I woke up freezing in the middle of the night, so I dug out my woolly hat and his. I snuggled Pete’s on him while he slept or pretended to sleep.
Either way, when I lay back down, he pulled me to him, so we were spooning in our sleeping bags. This was before Preet, when I still thought that maybe something would happen. I kept still, wanting him to slide his hand into my sleeping bag. But instead he started snoring and rolled away.
* * *
—
The rain had stopped by the time we woke up at dawn as two other cars pulled in, and then a truck too. Everyone headed for the beach with buckets and golf clubs modified with slotted spoons on the bottom. We were all there for the same thing. Agates.
Nobody actually made a run for it, but people did beeline for the beach pretty fast.
After Pete and I had each found half a bucket of amber-colored agates ranging from the size of a jelly bean to the size of a cherry, we ran into two old ladies. One of them showed us an agate the size of a goose egg.
Golden, with an oval hole on one side, and inside that, millions of tiny, sparkling bits of seaworn crystal.
“I found it five minutes ago, just up the beach.”
The rock fit perfectly into the palm of my hand. It seemed to glow, even though there were black storm clouds above and no sunshine at all. The rock was translucent and its small cavern was pure magic. I slid my pinkie finger in and felt the absolutely ancient and microscopic landscape inside.
The old lady laughed. “Wave almost got me, but that’s how you see them, isn’t it? You’re looking and looking and not seeing nothing, and then a pop of jewel right there and you just got to get it.”
Pete nodded.
I nodded.
We couldn’t look away from the rock.
I handed it back, very reluctantly.
“You’ll need bigger buckets,” she said. “If you want to take a good haul home with you. Lots on the beach after that stormy night.”
“No,” we both said.
“Just one really good one,” Pete said. “Like that.”
* * *
—
We found a Japanese license plate (which was probably tsunami debris, all these years after that terrible earthquake), a dead pelican, and a tiny waterlogged Bible. Very close to the Bible—fate or not—there it was. Pete spotted it first.
“There!” Atop an isolated big rock across ten feet of water. “Treasure.” No one else was in sight.
“It’s all ours,” I said.
It was at least as big as the one the old lady had. It looked like a small Golden Delicious apple against the black rock.
“That, Annie Poltava”—Pete slung an arm around me—“that is our golden egg.”
“How are we going to get it?” A wave rolled in, super close. We backed up as it smashed angrily just below us.
“I’m going to swim.”
“No. You’re not.”
“Am so.”
“Are not.”
“Am so.”
“Are not.”
“I am!”
“Pete! No!” I pointed to the swirling water between the rock and us. The rising water. There was less than a foot between the golden orb and the water now.
Pete was already stripping off his clothes.
“Your dad is going to kill me, Pete!”
“You can tell him that his only child died doing something he loved.”
“Not funny!”
“See you in a minute.” He was down to his underwear. Then he stripped that off too and jumped into the surf.
I counted. One. Two. Three. Four. Five.
Then the undulating surface shifted, and I saw his blond head just below the even blonder agate. He reached up for it, but with the way that the water was rushing in and out of the tiny cove, he got swept to the left.
“Are you okay?”
I wanted to dive in after him, but of course that would be beyond stupid. Yet what else could I do, except collect his clothes so that I could help him get them on when he made it?
He swam against the tide, pushing his way back to the rock.
He reached up again, but this time the current shoved him forward, bashing him into the rock nowhere near the agate.
“Pete!”
“I’m okay!”
“You’re not!”
“One more minute!” he shouted. “Just one more minute.”
Maybe he didn’t have one minute! He was too cold. The water was too wild.
Suddenly the two old ladies were behind me.
“What the hell is he doing?” the one with the agate said.
I was counting that minute. Thirty, thirty-one, thirty-two—
The other one shook her head. “Getting his rock, that’s what.”
“He’s getting out,” I said. Fifty, fifty-one. “Even if he doesn’t get it.”
“He’ll get it,” the first woman said.
We all stared. No one moved. Pete lined himself up one more time and pushed himself out of the water and made a grab and missed and made another grab and got it.
* * *
—
None of us cheered.
Pete didn’t make one triumphant noise.
I could tell that he was too cold and too exhausted.
He swam back with slow, labored strokes. I could hear his teeth chattering when I helped him out of the water.
He didn’t care that he was naked, or that the two old ladies were tsk-tsking him.
“Stupid!”
“Could’ve drowned. Then what?”
“Your girlfriend would’ve had to go tell your parents. Now, is that fair?”
“Put this on, you idiot.” The one with the agate took off her fleece hat and yanked it onto his head, right down over his ears. “All the important heat goes out the top. Now let me see what this brouhaha was all about.”
Shivering, Pete handed it to her. She compared the two. Pete’s was bigger, but not by much. It was rounder, and the cave in it was bigger, with bigger crystals.
“Nice rock,” she said. Then she wound up as if she were going to throw the first pitch in a Mariners game and chucked it back into the ocean.
“Babs!” the other woman said. “What the hell did you do that for? You damn fool!”
Pete stared at the spot where the agate had made the
tiniest splash. I put my jacket over his shoulders, but it just looked like a little cape. He shivered, lips turning blue.
“Ignore my sister,” Babs said. “Focus on me, kid. That was one of the stupidest things I’ve ever seen anyone do.” She poked him in the chest. “And for a rock!”
“Which I worked really, really hard for.”
“I’m teaching you a lesson. Do you know what the lesson is?”
“I’m pretty sure that you’re going to tell me.” His teeth chattered, shaking the words as he spoke them slowly through blue lips.
“I should get him back to the truck,” I said.
“Putting yourself in danger is never worth it!” Babs nearly shouted. “You could’ve died! And I’d’ve been here watching it happen. And my sister too. And your girlfriend would be scarred for life! How about that!”
“She’s not my girlfriend,” Pete said.
“Friend, then.”
“Best friend,” Pete and I said at the same time.
“Better a friend than a girlfriend,” Babs said. “A fool like that is no keeper.”
Babs’s sister pulled her away, the two of them heading for the cars, which was probably the only way she was going to let it go anytime soon.
* * *
—
Pete watched the water for a long time, saying nothing. Then he shifted his gaze and watched the horizon for another long time.
“You’re trying to talk yourself into looking some more?” I hugged him from behind to give him some warmth. “Or out of looking some more?”
“A little bit of both.”
“You’re too cold.”
“I’m too cold.” He nodded. “I’m too cold to keep looking. Right?”
“You’re not going to get warm until you have a shower,” I said. “And that is hours away.”
Sighing, he took my hand, and we made our way across the rocky beach carrying our buckets rattling with tiny treasures. But not the big one.
* * *
—
It started to rain halfway back to the car, proving that it was the right thing to have left when we did.
We took off our boots and crawled into the back and into our sleeping bags. Pete kept the pink-and-white hat on.
“I might never take it off,” he said. “She was right. That was a stupid thing to do.”
I scrambled between the front seats to look for the bar of chocolate that I thought was on the driver’s seat.
It wasn’t there, but in its place was Babs’s golden egg. And a note.
This is an important moment.
I don’t usually give anyone anything.
But I’m giving you this.
PS. I took the chocolate.
Pete’s eyes were closed, but I knew he wasn’t asleep. I took his hand and folded the big agate into it. He sat up right away, cupping the rock in both hands, the little cave looking at him. Then he started to cry.
“I think I almost died,” he said. “I think I came really close this time, Annie. Really close. For a rock.”
Pete is buried in his sleeping bag, turned away from me. Usually, he’d be up by now, so I give his shoulder a gentle shove.
“We should get moving.”
He doesn’t answer.
I reach to put my hand on his forehead, but even from a couple of inches away, I can tell that his fever is worse.
“Pete?”
Still no answer.
I shake his shoulder.
“So tired,” he mutters. “Let me sleep.”
“I can’t. We’re behind by a day at least, right? Not only can we not wait, but also we have to hurry. At least ten miles today. Okay?”
“Too tired.”
“Where are we, Pete? Should we turn back? Would that be faster?”
He shakes his head. “Closer to Fire Camp.”
I pull him onto his back. His cheeks are flushed, his eyes almost crusted closed with sleep.
“Open your eyes, Pete.”
I’m not scared. I’m not scared. I’m not scared. This is not scary. This is going to be fine. Everything is going to be all right.
He tries to open his eyes, but they’re too crusty, and he’s too weak.
“Can’t,” he whispers.
“Try it again,” I say. “Open your eyes.” I stick my finger in my shirt and use it to clear away the crust. “There, try now.”
His eyes open. A bit better, but he still looks like he’s got a cloudy film over each eye.
“You have to get up, Pete.”
“Let me sleep.”
“Show me your leg.”
“It’s fine.”
“Show me your leg right now!” I unzip the sleeping bag and fling it off of him. He’s wearing only his underwear—unicorns wearing underwear—so I see right away that his bad leg is tomato red, with darker streaks, like an heirloom tomato, coming away from the bandages. He starts shivering but has no energy to argue. “I can smell it from here, Pete. Can you smell that?”
He nods.
“I’m going to look at it.”
He shakes his head. “All good.”
“Bullshit.” I grab the first-aid scissors and cut through the bandage.
I see the wound and gasp.
The cut is oozing a viscous, cloudy fluid, and it’s puffed up and bruised all around, like a sea anemone, as if it would tighten around my finger if I were to poke it. “You need to look at this, Pete.” I let my hand hover over the wound, and the heat coming off of it warms my palm. “You need to understand how bad this is.”
He wedges himself up on his elbow, but he still can’t really see it, so I lift his leg, and he screams, so I put it down as gently, gently as I can. His whole calf is hot, and swollen too. He sits up straighter. I can tell when his eyes land on it, because he becomes very, very still, as if the leg were something that might bolt away on its own if he startled it.
“Shit.” He whispers it. His face is pale as he whispers it again, and again. Over and over. “Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.”
“We need to turn back,” I say. “We have to get you some antibiotics.”
“We have antibiotics.”
I dig in the first-aid kit for the bottle. The crossed-out label says that whatever was inside expired two years ago. Are these pills newer? I don’t remember dumping them in.
“Did you put them in here?”
“You did.” He holds his hand out for the bottle. “After reading that story about the guy who sawed off his own arm to get out of a slot canyon.”
“They’re expired,” I say. “For sure.”
“Better than nothing.” He reaches for his water bottle, and even just that much movement makes him wince. “Give me two.”
“Maybe three?” I say. “If they’re expired, doesn’t that make them weaker?”
“One.” He takes another look at his leg. “It looks worse than it is.”
He means that we need to save the pills so we have them to give him for the rest of the hike, no matter which direction we go. I realize that I don’t know what’s closer at this point. Home? Or Fire Camp?
“Do you think we’re closer to home, Pete?” Suddenly the idea of it is an oasis on a burning horizon. My dad tending his tomatoes and feeding the hummingbirds. Everett running out to greet us wearing only underpants and the biggest grin in the world. “I miss the dads. I miss Gigi, even if she isn’t there.”
“I miss home too,” Pete says. When he doesn’t say anything more, I know what he means. He doesn’t know where we are either.
* * *
—
I pack up camp while Pete lies on his mat outside, in the shade of the tree, his leg elevated on a rock. When I tell him that it’s time to go, he says he feels better, but he’s moving slowly and not putting w
eight on that leg at all, thanks to our makeshift crutch.
I nearly emptied his backpack into mine, cramming in as much as I could to reduce the weight of his. When I help him with his pack, he squeezes his eyes shut, gripping his crutch so hard that his knuckles blanch.
“Is that okay?”
“Did you take stuff out?”
“As much as I could,” I say. “You’ve still got your clothes, mostly. And your sleeping bag. I’ve got everything else.”
“Feels like you put in all your stuff,” he says. “Just because I feel like shit doesn’t mean you can get away with that, you know.”
“Jig’s up, then.” I do up his chest strap. “We should get going. When is the last time you looked at the topo map?”
“With you.”
“The day before yesterday, then.”
“It’s still northeast,” he says. “That hasn’t changed.”
But we don’t know what we’re heading toward. Or the elevation, or how steep it is, or if there will be a river.
“You’re sure it’s not faster to turn back?”
“No. Honestly, Annie. It’s not faster.” His tone is firm. “It’s way longer to go back.”
This is when I know that something has shifted. I know this because I’m leaving things out. I’m not telling him that I’m worried about not having the topographical maps. I’m not telling him that I’m worried that the only reason we’re not turning around is because we’re so far off our original trail that even the compass wouldn’t do us much good, or not any more than the sun and moon in the sky. I don’t even want to tell him these things. I don’t want him to worry more. I don’t want him to think about the bad choices that got us to this piece of the wilderness that is so beautiful, with the river on one side and the mountains climbing up on the other, the sky hazy with smoke, and the sun like the plump deep orange grapefruit on the Apocalypse Now poster. Take a picture of this. I bring my hands up to my eyes like a kid with an imaginary camera. Click.
