“Come on.” Josh lets go of her hand and it flops to her side and she feels suddenly untethered, adrift. She wobbles where she stands.
He trains his GoPro camera on her. “Okay, I’ll admit it. I have a very selfish reason for wanting you to come. Every story needs a romantic interest. Who wants to watch a bunch of smelly dudes roaming around in the woods?”
She can’t help but smile at this.
“Besides, aren’t you the one who said it?”
“Said what?”
“There are other ways to live?”
“Did I say that?” she says and remembers that rum-drunk night long ago. “I guess I did say that.”
Josh says, “Cliff? What do you think? Room for one more?”
Cliff unties the anchor ropes and approaches her, looking her up and down, making calculations in his head. “How much you weigh?”
Her smile jerks. Her eyes shift. “Um. Well …”
Cliff reaches out and picks her up with two hands, assessing her size. Then drops her. “Should be fine.”
The plane cuts through the sky, and all around them evergreen forests reach off into an unguessable distance, dotted with lakes and fanged with mountains. Here are glaciers that seem to Michelle to give off their own special blue light. And ocean inlets are dotted with the white, surging forms of beluga whales. “Six hundred sixty-three thousand square miles,” Cliff says. “You could crush Texas, California, and Montana into Alaska. The biggest state. And the least populated.”
Michelle has never felt like more of a speck. The five of them are cramped into the plane. The floor and walls and ceiling are upholstered with orange shag carpet for soundproofing. A hula girl with the head of a moose is anchored to the dash.
She shouldn’t be nervous. She refuses to be nervous. She has studied this area over and over and over. The maps are inside her. She tries to envision their placement from a satellite view—with the plane as a red pin—and this brings her some comfort.
Lester hands out bags of trail mix and tins of waterproof matches, and Todd says, “Thanks, Mom.”
Cliff continues with his rant. He seems to view himself as some cross of tourist guide and doomsday prophet. “They call it the Ring of Fire. We’re at the upper end of it. Spans a good portion of the Pacific. Volcanic hotspot. Hell on earth.”
Michelle peers out the window—she’s never seen so many mountains. She feels lost up here. She can’t imagine how lost she would feel on the ground. Todd leans into her, so closely that his breath batters her hair. “Scared of flying? Need me to hold you comfortingly?”
“Don’t be gross,” she says. “But the engine on this thing does sound like five lawnmowers duct-taped together, which is not totally reassuring.”
“This one time, in Ghana, we bummed a ride on an old Air America cargo plane when—”
“That’s great,” Michelle says and then the plane banks and steadies itself into a descent, heading toward a long lake.
“Landing here for a quick drop-off. Hunting camp called in a request. Got to re-up on ammo, whiskey, beans and rice, propane. Shouldn’t take too long and we’ll be on our way.”
Not five minutes later, the plane skips and skims along the surface of the water, slowing and rumbling toward the lakeshore. Everyone exits the plane and hops into the thigh-high water and helps Cliff unload and trudge the supplies toward shore, where they kick the water out of their boots and call out, “Hello?”
There is a canoe, overturned to keep the water out, and a mud-caked ATV parked on a rise. A thin wisp of smoke rises from a dead campfire. Bear bags hang from trees like cocoons, tied higher than any grizzly could reach, and YETI coolers are stacked near a wooden shelter with a stove. Three tents seem to breathe in the breeze, all of them empty.
Here is a dressing rack, made from shaved logs, where deer are hung to skin and butcher. A buck’s head—with a length of spine still attached—dangles here like a terrible ornament. Flies cover it completely in a seething black mask. The ground below is muddy with blood and lumped with intestines.
A fly lands on Michelle’s mouth and she spits and wipes at her lips in disgust.
“Said they’d be here …” Cliff turns in a slow circle. “Hello! Hey! Anybody!” His voice echoes off and then the woods claim it.
Then they hear whooping laughter and turn back to the shore and realize that they are alone. Josh and Lester and Todd have abandoned them. “What are those knucklehead friends of yours up to?”
She says, “They’re my employees,” and he says, “Could have fooled me, given the way you were holding hands with Prince Charming earlier.”
She doesn’t respond, because something has stolen her full attention. She raises an arm, pointing. First at the clothes and boots cast aside in messy piles. And then to the three young men, naked and climbing upward gingerly through the bushes, over the boulders, picking their way to the top of a basalt rise.
Here, one by one, they leap off. Howling, missiling through the thirty feet of air, and plunging into the water with a soapy splash. They swim and roughhouse, red-cheeked and exultant, and Josh waves at Michelle and in that moment danger seems so far away.
…
A half hour later, they’re in the air again, with Cliff muscling the yoke through a rough patch of turbulence. Below, the woods give way to gray-green ocean inlets saddled between low mountains.
“Are you legitimately worried about those guys?” Josh says.
Cliff shrugs and says, “No reason to panic yet. I’ll roam back here after I drop you off. But over a thousand people go missing every year in Alaska, and several hundred of them go missing right here.”
Lester leans forward. “You mean the Bermuda Triangle of the North? Are we there?”
“The edge of it, yeah,” Cliff says.
“I’m curious about the theories.”
“Legends might be a better word. Some say it’s ley lines.” He explains the channels of energy, sometimes associated with vortexes. “Lots of ancient churches and graveyards and monuments are built around them. Technology goes haywire. Gives some people epiphanies, makes others go mad. Like a thinning between the physical and spiritual worlds. If you believe in that kind of hooey. Anyway, the places where all these ley lines converge, some people call vortexes. Some people call them doors. And some people call them trees.”
“Trees?” Michelle says. “Why trees?”
“Don’t know. Guess you think of the ley lines as roots. They all come together at the tree.”
Lester says, “Is there any science that underpins that theory? Can you, for example, record electromagnetic anomalies in this area? Could heavy iron deposits create compass confusion that people excuse away as supernatural?”
“Maybe. Probably,” Cliff says. “No matter what you believe, doesn’t change the fact that this place has a way of eating people up.”
They fly over a spattering of islands, what Michelle says looks like an oversize version of Puget Sound. The water throughout the inlet is curiously busy with logs. They move with the waves—the same faint, trembling motion you see in breeze-rippled reeds.
“All right,” Cliff says. “This is where we say good-bye.”
The plane slowly banks, making a lazy half circle of the inlet, as Cliff tries to eyeball a section of water that isn’t hazardous. But the logs—the logs are everywhere. Except for one corridor of water, maybe three hundred yards long, their only option. “This will be tricky, but I can stick it.” They settle into their approach, and the plane lowers until its pontoons hover just over the treetops, ready for a quick drop onto the water. “Here we go.”
Just then a flock of geese explodes into view. Like dark spores driven by the wind. Their bodies strike the plane with a thud-thud-thud-thud. The windshield shatters and the wind sucks and howls into the cabin, along with a swirl of feathers, a spray of blood.
The engine sputters and whines. A propeller snaps off, flying back to knife through the tail. Their altitude drops, and they
narrowly avoid the trees below, their crowns spiking the air. The plane tips one way, then another, and now they are out over the water. They can barely see, their vision wind-burned, smoke-hazed, but where there aren’t logs, there are islands, and where there aren’t either, the water is steely gray with waves kicking up into foamy points.
Cliff battles for control of the yoke. His eyes smear with tears from the wind. Rivulets of blood streak across his cheeks like rain on a car window.
They approach the water, the pontoons nearly touching, the plane bumping along, trying to find a hold on the water. Maybe they’re going to make it after all.
A log appears on the other side of a wave, rolling toward them. It hits a pontoon, which rips off with a metallic cry. The plane lurches sideways, sheers into the cold, gray water, and kicks up a hard wave.
Everyone is thrown forward. After all that wild movement, the sudden stillness is impossible to process. Their minds remain up in the air, their bodies limp and rag-dolled by the crash.
Water seeps into the cabin in a gurgling rush. The cold stirs them, but they only have to time to cry out before their words are gargled, then silenced.
For a second, Josh believes he’s back on that mountain pass with his family. The same taste of blood. The same groan of torn metal. The same brain-bruised disorientation. His family—no, his friends—will die if he doesn’t do something. He needs to do something.
The plane sinks, tipping sideways, then upside down. The single pontoon maintains its buoyancy. The top of the plane strikes the muddy bottom, sending up a cloud of grit. Oil bleeds. Great wobbling bubbles rise from hidden pockets and seams.
Todd frees himself and worms through the shattered window and kicks his way to the surface.
Cliff tries to wrench open the door, but it’s bent shut. Lester squeezes through the broken window and then offers a hand to Cliff and pulls. The window is too small and Cliff is too big, but there’s no other way, and on the way through the frame, glass bites into him, a shard the size of a dagger lodging in his gut.
A thread of blood follows the two men as they kick their way out of sight.
Josh watches them go, still dazed. His thoughts feel tender, his body separate from him. A plastic bag—crumbed with trail mix—floats by like a jellyfish. On the other side of it is Michelle.
Her eyes are half-closed. Her skin appears as pale as alabaster. Her glasses hang crookedly on her nose, one stem broken. And her hair swirls around her face like seaweed.
A few bubbles escape Josh, the last air in his lungs. He watches them totter through the cabin and escape the window and rush to the surface. He knows he needs to follow the air if he’s going to live, if he’s going to save Michelle. His pulse beats in his ears, louder and louder, like a countdown to an end.
He rips loose his seat belt. And then hers, fumbling with the buckle until it clinks open. Her body flops when he curls an arm around it and tries to find a way out.
Todd stumbles out of the water and onto the shore. Of a boulder-humped and tree-studded island. He’s tucked into a pocket of beach protected by a rocky point jutting out into the water. Here he hunches over, resting his hands on his knees, panting. He retches out a puddle of salt water. Then spits a few times and laughs.
His job is to microwave burritos. He sets up cameras. He posts to and monitors their social media feeds. He could maybe squeeze out a sit-up, but it’s been years since he’s tried. He could maybe score with a girl by swiping right, but he prefers to jerk off. He doesn’t climb—he belays. He doesn’t get blasted out of the cannon—he lights the fuse. He doesn’t sit on the throne—he juggles and jokes. That’s his role.
But damn, damn, damn, does this feel good. Like the prickling rush that follows a nut-draining orgasm or a bump of coke. No wonder Josh takes the risks that he does.
Something’s been happening. Ever since they set off on this trip. He’s finally felt some sense of togetherness, authorship. He’s more than a prop or a grip—not just a backup singer, but a true participant.
The plane is thirty yards offshore. The pontoon juts out of the water. The current is fast, rippling along, carrying debris with it along with a rainbow slick of oil. Cliff works his way forward slowly, bobbing like a porpoise, with Lester assisting him.
“Can you believe this?” Todd calls out to them.
He doesn’t notice Cliff holding his hand to his gut, the blood gloving his hand. He doesn’t notice that Josh and Michelle haven’t yet emerged from the wreck. Because he’s buzzing so hard, every nerve lit. He can’t stop the laughter rolling out of him. “Oh, shit. Oh, shit yeah! I’ve never rushed like that. Kiss of death. Coffin breath all over me.” He lets out a whoop. He jumps up and nearly falls over, his legs wobbly. “Are you feeling what I’m feeling? Are you soaking in the same endorphin bath?”
Cliff and Lester slog out of the ocean. Lester drops to his knees and chokes out a sob. But Cliff stands there a moment, staring at Todd, before swinging a fist—the size of a brick—and knocking him flat.
Todd doesn’t remember falling. He was standing up one moment, lying there the next. Dazed, barely aware of the line of blood dribbling from his nose and into his ear. All the good feeling is suddenly gone. Replaced by a dismal emptiness.
He watches some geese fly overhead, maybe from the same flock that struck their plane. They are arranged in an arrowhead formation, as if they were a weapon.
Cliff lifts his booted foot—and brings it down, hard. Onto Todd’s GoPro camera. It shatters.
“Told you, didn’t I?” Cliff says, several breaths between every word. “Million ways Alaska will kill you. And I’m one of them.”
Lester falls to his knees in a posture of prayer. “Is it bad?”
Cliff checks his wound then, lifting his hand from his belly. The shard of glass gleams. A fresh surge of blood burbles out of it. “I’m alive. Don’t know that I can say the same for the other two …”
He nods to the wrecked plane and the three of them all stare toward it hopelessly.
The current carries them along, and when they finally break the surface, they’re past the cove. Josh’s breath comes in frayed gasps. Michelle dangles off him. Her head lolls, but she’s alive, coughing up water. Her broken glasses dangle from one ear, and then vanish when a wave hits them.
He doesn’t know where to swim because of the logs. They roll and surge all around them, some still rough with bark, others bald and gray. They knock together with damp claps. Broken branch stems threaten to stab and claw.
One slides down a wave and torpedoes toward them—and Josh drags Michelle below. A long splinter of wood misses them by inches. He kicks hard, and then they’re up again, on the other side, spitting water.
He gulps enough air to speak. “You hurt?”
She shakes her head: No? Or: She doesn’t know?
He sees the island then, only twenty yards away. The current pulls them along the shore, toward the open ocean that waits at the head of the inlet. “I need you to swim hard for a little bit longer. Okay?”
Two waves converge then—each carrying a fat log—and Josh and Michelle are caught in the trough between them. “Stay with me.”
He pulls her under again, as deep as he can manage, into the gray-green water, and he risks a look upward. The sunlit surface ripples and the logs scissor into place where they trod water a moment before.
When they surface, gasping, no more logs barricade the way. There is only the stone-strewn beach before them. “Come on. Almost there.”
She grips his shoulders as he powers his legs and motors them toward shore. Finally they stand, the water waist-deep but the current still dragging, hard enough that they stumble and lose their balance more than once. They’re soaked and shivering from the cold and adrenaline. Eventually they make it to the steep, short beach. Their shoes clatter the rocks and slip in the mud.
“Thank,” Michelle says, “you.”
“You okay?”
She wipes the water from her face,
takes a deep, shuddering breath. Slowly spins in a circle to orient herself. He sees what she sees. Woods. Water. And logs. The mainland is a mile or so away, a forested wall. In the distance mountains rise. He knows what she must feel. Small, fragile, lost. And he knows it’s wrong, but this same vulnerability makes him feel strong. He saved her. They made it out of the wreck alive. He is aware that this is a stupid metaphor—him editing the past—but it feels like exactly the stupid metaphor he needs. She might feel lost but he feels found.
“What the hell just happened, Josh?”
She stares off at the emptiness. Mosquitoes cluster around them. Whining. Needling their skin. For a moment their noise becomes the only sound. An almost electronic frequency. Michelle smacks one and screams, “Fuck! We are so fucked!” and leaves behind a bloody smear.
The satellite phone is dead. No matter how many times Lester punches the power button, no matter how hard he shakes it or says, “Come on. Come on, damn you.” Nothing. Then he brings it to his mouth and closes his eyes as if he could wake it with a kiss.
He can imagine the satellites orbiting above, more than two thousand of them, listening for his signal. He can imagine the more than two hundred thousand cell towers spearing hilltops across the United States. And he can imagine the streams of data channeling between them. He recognizes, even now, the gridwork of his connection. He’s not lost. He knows exactly how to get from here to there. But it’s all dependent on this stupid, stupid phone.
A mewl of pain startles him and his eyes snap open.
A few minutes ago, he helped settle Cliff tenderly into a sheltered alcove, a corner of the shore walled in by basalt. Cliff sits there now with his legs flopped out and his arms wrapped around his belly as if he were hugging himself. The big man’s eyes are red-rimmed and staring hard at Lester. “It’s like you were saying.”
Lester kneels by him. “What?” His words come out as a rasp. “What was I saying?”
“The birds,” Cliff says. “It’s like they didn’t know where to fly. Must have been the electromagnetism that did it.”
Suicide Woods Page 15
