“You guys shouldn’t have come,” Roland was saying.
“And miss out on a beautiful sunrise?” Chris said.
“You didn’t have to come. I’m fine, really.”
But Roland looked anything but fine. Always impeccably dressed, the front of his Oxford shirt was covered in sand. One pant leg was ripped open from the knee down, and his eyes were red and swollen.
“Wanna talk about it?” Chris said.
Roland’s look conveyed that he wished to do no such thing.
“So you’re on a waiting list,” Chris said. “Big deal. It happens. Have you even stopped to think about why you didn’t get accepted? Have you? Was it because you got an A-minus instead of an A in biology? Or no, wait, I know. You were only co-captain on the debate team. That’s what it was. Come on, man. That’s exactly the kind of shit admission boards look at. What difference does it make? There’s no way they can tell who you are by looking at some test scores and a few sheets of paper.”
Roland, getting red in the face, turned toward the ocean.
“You remember Pastaki?” Chris asked. “He had to wait almost a year before he got into the Point. You just gotta be patient. You’ll get in.”
“You’re right,” Roland said, turning to Chris. “You’re exactly right. I will get in. And do you know why? Do you? Because once my father hears about this, he’ll make a few calls, and just like that,” Roland shook the flashlight, “I’ll get accepted.”
“So? What’s wrong with that?”
“Everything! Everything is wrong with that. Is it too much to ask that for once in my life, I do something on my own? I wanted … no, I have to get in on my own merit, or I’m not going at all. It’s always been because of him. Everything in my life has been because of him!”
“You’re preaching to the choir. You think I’d be here if it wasn’t for the Governor?”
“It’s different for you, Chris. You don’t want to be here. But it’s a privilege … no, it’s an honor for me. And none of it would have happened without him. Well, I’m through playing by his rules. I didn’t get accepted, so I’m not going.” He turned and shouted at the sea: “You hear me? I’m not going!”
As if words were not enough, Roland threw the flashlight. My gaze followed its trajectory, dragged down to where it vanished in the water. The waves had increased, pushed by the strong wind coming off the water. Not far away, a watery voice murmured from the archway.
“You’re only fooling yourself,” Chris said. “You’ve been reading about the military since you were a kid. You’re always talking about some battle no one’s ever heard of. Face it, Van Belle, you were born to be a soldier!”
“Don’t you dare tell me what I was born to be!” Roland shouted. “I’ve been hearing that my entire life. No one’s ever bothered asking me what I want to be. Not ever. You think you know me so well, but you don’t. You have no idea …” Roland hesitated, casting a wary look at the three of us. “You have no idea how close I came to not rappelling that first time.”
“I had trouble, too.”
“You’re a terrible liar, Chris Forsythe. You didn’t think twice about it. I came this close to going back. How’s that for a soldier, huh?”
Roland moved to the center of the archway. His hand was curled into a fist; between the knuckles I caught a glimpse of a small, white object.
“I’m through with it. You hear me? Through with every last one of you! Starting with you, Prince Thomas Van Belle, cousin of King Charles I, who rode in the cavalry with Prince Rupert in the Battle of Naseby, June fourteenth, 1645. And Oliver Van Belle, First Lieutenant in the Royal Navy, who died fighting the Dutch in the Battle of Solebay, June sixth, 1672. Robert Van Belle, Lieutenant Colonel, who fought at Louisbourg under Wolfe, summer of 1758. William Van Belle, Corporal, who lost his arm at Princeton, January second, 1776.”
Roland recited these names and dates the way a congregation chants the Lord’s Prayer—mechanical, thoughtless, done so many times it had become ingrained in memory. It was one thing to witness Chris go down a path of self-destruction, but quite another to watch Roland wage his own lonely rebellion. Roland’s rashness stemmed from a weakness, not a passion, and it extinguished any trace of anarchy in me that, in the preceding weeks, Chris had managed to ignite.
To the east, red streaks of dawn hung over the ocean, revealing the approaching waves. They were now much larger than whitecaps foaming in the darkness. The seascape had awakened. Chris and Derek also noticed the change, and they both looked to be on the verge of pulling Roland back to safety.
“Nathaniel Van Belle, gunner in the artillery—fought in the Capture of Fort George, May twenty-seventh, 1813. Arthur Van Belle, Major—fought at Petersburg. Died with his boots on, July second, 1864. Richard Van Belle, Captain—spent five months as a prisoner of war in 1916. Roland Van Belle the First, Lieutenant Colonel who led the 106th Artillery in the Battle of the Bulge, winter of forty-five.”
Even from a distance it was bigger than any I had seen. It towered over a row of smaller waves, slowly pushing its way toward us. A deep trench formed before it as its peak curled over in a white, foaming forelock.
All three of us shouted at Roland. But he didn’t hear us. His attention was fixed on the small object in the palm of his hand.
“And you, Roland Van Belle the Second. Led the last offensive in Vietnam, March twenty-ninth, 1973.”
The outer fringe of the wave—waves in their own right—swelled and broke over the Anvil. From the archway came a loud sucking sound.
We shouted and waved our arms. It was too late to run out to him. Roland’s mouth was open, his words reaching me as if his voice alone filled my ears.
“I’m through with you, Father!”
Roland pulled his arm back and flung it forward with all his strength. The tiny form of the Van Belle insignia, passed from generation to generation, glinted in the sun in a long descending arc before falling into the ocean.
Roland looked up just as the wave crashed ashore. The surge of water took everything with it—our unheeded shouts, the narrow archway, the image of Roland standing helpless before it. Water swept over my feet and up my leg, pelting me with ice-cold ocean spray. I crouched low to the ground and covered my head with my arms. A waterfall roared over me, and for that instant it contained more strength than the rock beneath my feet. I fell to my knees, afraid what I would find when I looked up. Chris and Derek stood beside me, and between them, lying in a heap, was Roland.
We stared at him in disbelief. Water trapped in rock pockets foamed and hissed. Roland tried to speak, his throat working up and down like a gull swallowing a fish.
Chris was the first to find his voice.
“You lucky son of a bitch.”
When Roland cracked a smile, we laughed like we had just been told the funniest joke of our lives.
“How do you feel?” I asked him after we had climbed to the Anvil’s highest point.
He looked at me, confused. “Alive,” he said finally.
We had all gotten wet. Roland was more wet than dry, and my right leg was soaked. The back of Chris’ jeans were wet, and Derek was damp around the collar.
“How’s our escape route looking?” Chris asked me, retrieving a soaked pack of cigarettes.
“Tide is still low,” I reported, surveying the chain of steppingstones.
Chris nodded, his eyes returning to his roommate. Roland was studying the waves around the archway. Focus had crept into his expression, his eyes drawn to where the immensity of the open horizon funneled into a bottleneck of land and sea.
“I never want to see this place again,” he said, his face a canvas of mixed emotion. Perhaps we had been waiting for him to reach this conclusion, for we each started down the trail.
My wet clothes took away what little warmth the rising sun provided. Overhead a plane passed through the cloudless sky. When I looked back at the archway, something near the water caught my eye. It was Roland’s flashlight. The wave
s must have kicked it ashore.
“Hey, your flashlight!” I called to him.
The others were ahead of me. When Roland looked back, I went to the edge and pointed to where his flashlight was lodged in the rocks fifteen feet below.
“Thanks, but no thanks,” he replied, and continued down the trail.
The water around the Anvil had calmed, as if the ocean needed time to summon another great wave. The silence was so complete I could hear the plane overhead. It was heading due east across the ocean. I watched as it inched its way across the sky, leaving a thin white trail in its wake. If anyone up there were to look out the window, they would probably only see a speck of land; certainly nothing to hold their attention for long.
Still looking up, I was surprised when the plane suddenly reversed directions. Now it was going west, back toward land. An instant later it was spinning in a tight circle going nowhere at all. By the time my hands started to tremble, it was too late to look away. There was too much space above me, too much depth in the clear blue sky. The weakness in my hands spread down to my knees. My vision swam. Somewhere far below, the waves were whispering. There was a voice, a music almost, in that sound.
Everything was happening as I knew it would: the dizziness swept over me; the ground tilted beneath my feet as if the rocks on which I stood had been removed.
The vertigo had me again. And it wasn’t letting go.
The plane was gone, the sky was gone, and the sun had begun to pivot, spinning from east to west, slowly at first, but eventually with such speed that a bright circle of light shined down from all directions. Though I couldn’t remember looking down, I was somehow facing the flashlight wedged into the shore. I only thought to close my eyes the instant before I plunged into the ocean.
CHAPTER 16: MAROONED
When I yelled, the sound carried with me underwater, becoming a smothered, bottled-up noise inside my head. I went in twisted sideways, and in this regard the vertigo saved me, for the water was shallow, and if I had gone in straight I would have struck my head on the rocks. The water was like ice, and it shocked me as if I had stuck my finger in an electrical outlet. I was in a current, something infinitely stronger than myself, and it went all the way through me, through my teeth and into my brain, shattering the vertigo so suddenly I became aware of everything at once.
I tried to feel my way along the bottom, but everything was in motion. One second my hands were immersed in slick vegetation, and then everything beneath me vanished, the ocean floor yanked from under me like a rug. But it was me that was moving. Something had me by the legs and was pulling me backwards, away from the place I had fallen in. The rocks returned briefly—I slid along them as if falling sideways down a cliff, helpless to slow my descent.
Then, quite suddenly, it stopped. It was calm in this new place, and it felt like I had traveled a great distance to get there. When I stretched my legs and didn’t touch bottom, I knew I had left the shore behind. I could feel the deep stretching beneath me. But I wasn’t afraid—fear had frozen deep inside me in a place I couldn’t reach. There was strength in this fear, and I knew I would need it to reach the surface. Unable to breathe, panic began to gnaw through the cold and get to me. It was like a flame—the only warmth I knew—and once ignited, it spread rapidly, burning through all the numbness and indecision until only one thought flashed brightly in my head.
I kicked with all my strength and rose up. I threw my head, trying unsuccessfully to clear the surface. I kicked again and again. My arms grew heavy. The burning in my lungs intensified. A terror went through me that I was swimming down instead of up, but when I kicked a final time, sunlight exploded in my face.
An empty horizon lay before me. The Anvil had disappeared. But it was only that I had gotten turned around, and I was surprised at how close I was to shore. The waves had gotten larger, or maybe it was only that I was in them now. I bobbed up and down on the surface, spitting out saltwater that seeped in through clenched teeth. Wind swept across the water freezing my face, the air so cold I almost considered going back under.
I saw them standing where I had been just a moment before. They looked far away, like spectators in a crowd. I started to swim toward them, but the closer I got, the farther I was pushed to the right—in the direction of the archway. All the waves were funneled into this area. Down in the water, the archway was enormous. It loomed overhead, piercing the Anvil’s side with the depth of a tunnel.
The archway was what drove me on. Fear of drowning, even the ice-cold clench of the water, left me. It was this slow, inevitable pull into the tunnel that felt like death. The rock I was approaching was at the forefront of a shallow horseshoe of land. The tunnel was positioned at its center, with the surrounding water all swirls and eddies.
The shoreline was a bulging rock face, its smooth surface pockmarked from the onslaught of waves. I didn’t step ashore so much as I was thrown onto it, as if the sea no longer desired me. I pressed my cheek to the rock and held on. I concentrated on every slant and divot, squirming my feet and hands in such a way that I came to hug this unforgiving rock, this frontrunner of an unnamed island, as if it were my savior.
Though I had made it to shore, I wasn’t free of the water. Waves slapped me hard from behind, traveling up my back and neck, threatening to reclaim me. Everything was cold to the touch—the wet rock beneath my cheek, my soaked clothing, the wind that cut like cold steel—and each wave that struck sucked the breath out of me. All the cold that had built up underwater was now being released. The slick rock made it difficult to stay in one place for long. When I braced myself against another wave, I slipped and scraped my knee bad enough to cut through my jeans.
I heard voices to my left. This gentle sound carried across the water, threading between the waves. They were calling for me, and I shouted back to them, something loud and inarticulate. Though obstructed from view, the tunnel lay to my right. Hearing it without being able to see it only made it worse.
Another wave struck and nearly pulled me back in. The rock to either side was too sheer to move along; my only choice was to climb up. Unable to see above me, my hands led the way. I slowly crept higher, my body pressed to the rock. As I strained for handholds, a warmth entered my extremities that had previously been stiff with cold.
When I reached a narrow ledge, I heard a shout to my left. Chris, Roland and Derek were on the trail across from me. No more than thirty feet separated us. Despite everything, I smiled.
“Can you climb over?” Chris shouted.
The ledge I was on extended a few feet in either direction. Beyond this, the rock was vertical. I glanced to my right: the tunnel filled my vision.
“There’s nothing to hold on to!” I shouted back.
“How about higher up?” Chris shouted. “Can you climb any higher?”
But it was the same above me. I only needed to go another five or six feet and I’d be there, but the rock was too smooth to climb.
I shook my head.
“Okay, just stay put! We’ll figure a way to get over to you!”
I summoned the courage to look down. The waves had increased. I was maybe eight or ten feet above the water, and from this angle, the wall was too steep to climb down. Biting back my panic, I looked above me, and then again to either side. There was nowhere to go. I shook from the cold.
The three of them had stopped. They were looking past me in the direction of the ocean. The water beneath me had grown quiet. To my right came the sucking noise of water draining from the tunnel. Though I knew what was coming, I looked anyway. I only caught a glimpse of it from the corner of my eye, but it was enough.
“Jake! Jake!” It was Chris. Panic gripped his voice. “Hold on! You hear me? Hold on as tight as you can! Whatever you do, don’t let go!”
I tightened my grip on the wall. But it wouldn’t matter. Having been in the ocean, I understood it better. All the water was surging into the tunnel, and I knew that the wave would knock me loose and carry me there. I c
ould tell they didn’t want to leave, but when I pointed up, they gave me one last desperate look before scrambling up the trail out of view.
The water beneath me began to drop. I closed my eyes and waited. It wouldn’t be long. In the remaining seconds, I recalled our first trip to the beach when Chris had tried to swim to the Anvil. I visualized the wave exploding in the air, and heard a sound like thunder shoot out of the archway. Through it all, I watched Chris rise from the water, his dark wings fluttering in the air.
I have to fly—it’s the only way.
When the wind picked up, I let my hands fall to my sides. My feet on the narrow ledge was all I had left, and I dropped into a crouch, concentrating everything into this tiny space. At the last instant, I summoned my remaining strength and kicked off the wall.
Water swept past my calves, flipping me head over heels through the air. There was blue in every direction, and a split-second of weightlessness before the ocean drove into the right side of my body. I didn’t land in the water so much as I was sucked into it. I curled myself into a ball and waited for the impact on the rocks. But it didn’t come. Instead, I was pushed and pulled at from every direction, the underwater currents jabbing me in the most unexpected places. Sense of direction was lost—forward, backward, up and down—were all the same.
I kept spinning through this dark watery void. There was no end to it. I flailed my arms and legs in a desperate fight for the surface, but the ocean tossed me about, shrugging away my efforts. Then, suddenly, the sky burst overhead and was gone, allowing me a quick intake of breath before pulling me back under.
But this new air soon left me, giving way to the burning in my chest. My breaststroke degenerated into a feeble underwater dogpaddle. My arms still flailed, but my legs had stopped kicking, and the currents took me where they would. A blackness settled into the back of my eyes as if I had been pulled down deeper than before. There was a sense of permanence to the darkness, to this spot on the ocean floor that convinced me that I would never look upon the light of day again. All the panic and fear from a moment ago left me. I was no longer cold, no longer afraid.
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