AHMM, July-August 2007

by Dell Magazine Authors

  An extra five minutes, which bothered him in the summer and usually didn't disturb him at all in the winter.

  But sometimes the kids were creative. Sometimes they stashed things inside the toilet. The worst was the bearhide wrapped around a wooden frame. The hide still had a head, and damn if that thing didn't look real when he opened the door the first time, and damn if he didn't let out a little scream as he slammed the door shut—not something he'd want his old football buddies to know. But not many of his old football buddies would've opened the door again either.

  He had, and he'd been fine. (He'd half expected that bear to lunge out at him, but it hadn't. It hadn't moved at all, which was the thing that tipped him off to its fakeness.)

  He expected something like that here. Some kind of prank—a log, maybe, or a mannequin. He'd come across things like that before, things people had intentionally or otherwise left inside the portable toilets, and while they'd given him a start, they'd never scared him.

  Not like that fake bear.

  He knocked one final time, hoping that someone would open the door. When no one did, he squared his shoulders, put his fingers in the little half-moon handle, and pulled.

  The door came open easily enough. That surprised him, and looking back on it, he wasn't sure why. Later, he realized that everything about the toilet had surprised him, and yet the parts registered separately, not as a cohesive whole.

  First the door, then the flies—an entire swarm of them, buzzing around him as if it were summer. He tried to wipe them away from his face with his free arm.

  Then the darkness. He thought the entire place was in shadow, even though he knew it wasn't: There had been sunlight on the door, after all. But the interior looked dark, and these places only looked dark when they were in shadow.

  Only he tried not to leave them in shadow, so no one would be tempted to pull a prank or get hurt using the facilities.

  What he saw as darkness was actually blood, great gobs of it, dried black against the molded plastic walls.

  And finally, he saw the body, wedged—which was the wrong word because obviously, he'd heard the body flopping around—between the tiny sink and the side wall. The body belonged to a man, a Birkenstock wearer just like Oscar had initially suspected, only this guy had a knife stuck up to the hilt in the left side of his flannel shirt. He had a pair of glasses hanging from one ear, and his face looked naked. It also looked weird, with the blood spatter on one side, but not on the other. It took Oscar a while to figure out that the glasses had been in place when the guy died.

  Oscar had probably dislodged the glasses. He'd probably moved the entire body when he shoved the portable toilet.

  That made his stomach heave. He backed out of the toilet and ran toward the guardrail, planning to let go of his breakfast over the edge.

  He didn't quite make it. He lost a great meal on the side of the asphalt, crouching so that he barely missed his shoes.

  He stayed that way for a minute, afraid he'd lose more. He couldn't very well leave the guy here, but he couldn't take him either. That would be tampering with a crime scene, right? Oscar watched a lot of the detective programs on television—from CSI to all its spin-offs, and its nonfiction inspiration shows on Discovery and PBS—and he knew that touching stuff was the worst thing he could do.

  So was panicking.

  He swallowed against the bile still rising in his throat and made himself concentrate. No car, no other people, nothing obvious. He wasn't in any danger, even though his heart was pounding.

  He had time to consider his next move.

  He stood slowly. His stomach was settling down. He headed to his truck. He had a cell phone in there, mounted on the sunflap. If he called for help, all he had to do was wait for it, here, with his portable toilets, and the poor soul who had died in one.

  Obviously not in the act of using it either. The guy had died there, but he hadn't locked the door when he had gone inside. You'd think if some guy was being attacked by a maniac with a knife, he'd go into the nearest building—even if it was made of plastic and had thin walls—and lock the door.

  Maybe the guy didn't have time. Maybe he had run inside, the killer had grabbed the door and stabbed him, and then left while the poor victim flailed about inside, trying to pull the knife free and failing.

  Although, shouldn't a knife hold the blood in? Hadn't Oscar read somewhere that a stabbing victim should never remove a knife, that the knife would keep him from bleeding to death?

  Oscar was breathing hard. He flipped open his cell and stared at the reception bar.

  Nothing. He should've remembered that. One reason he loved this route was that his boss couldn't call him and make him veer off it, not without exquisite timing and a lot of luck.

  "Damn,” Oscar whispered. But he slipped the phone onto his belt clip and walked back to the scene.

  He was already thinking of it as a crime scene. How TV of him. He wasn't any kind of detective, and he couldn't figure things out. He had just stumbled on something awful, and now, it seemed, his brain wasn't working quite right.

  He had to get calm before he took the next step, whatever that would be. He walked away from the truck and headed toward the guard rail. Maybe the Lonely Rocks would know. Maybe they would help him remember where the cell reception started again or where the nearest police station was.

  Or ranger station. Or some kind of coast guard unit. Any place with someone official.

  The ocean was bright blue with a topping of snow-white foam near the rocks. In the distance, the horizon blended with the ocean, looking like the kind of smudge an artist would deliberately make with chalk by rubbing his finger along a firm line.

  Oscar made himself concentrate on that smudge as he crossed the parking lot, trying to remind himself that this was just a blip in his day, a bad event, one that he could cope with if he only tried hard enough.

  He just didn't want to be alone with it, nor, for some reason he didn't fully understand, did he want to leave the poor victim alone. The guy had been alone long enough already.

  The far edge of the guard rail was battered, and a section was missing. Oscar frowned. He hadn't noticed that before, but it meant nothing. He hardly ever came this far down the parking lot, both because he never needed to—you could see the ocean from the road—and because the sliding earth made him nervous. The asphalt already had big cracks in it, and he, with his oversize footballer's frame, didn't want to be the guy to send another section tumbling toward the sea.

  He stopped, his heart pounding. He needed to leave this all for the experts.

  But he couldn't. He needed to go forward, to see if the break in the rail had something to do with the poor slob in the portable toilet.

  Cautiously, he took the next few steps, putting a foot down, then easing his weight onto it, then taking the next step. The ground felt stable enough. There hadn't been a lot of rain, so the ground shouldn't have been saturated. And there hadn't been a lot of wind or high surf, so nothing should have been eroded from underneath.

  In other words, he had nothing to fear.

  Except that hole in the guard rail and that body in the toilet.

  He squared his shoulders again—a trick, he realized, he'd learned from his old coach—and continued forward, reaching the middle of the still-intact guard rail and peering over.

  The upside-down station wagon didn't surprise him. Its undercarriage was scratched and dented, probably from going end over end as it headed toward the water.

  It got hung up on one of the larger lava rocks near the edge of the surf. The car's front end pointed toward the sky, the wheels looking oddly vulnerable in the morning light.

  An expensive bicycle had been thrown clear, its frame twisted and flattened, probably by the weight of the car.

  To the car's right, he saw camping equipment scattered on the cliffside, and one of those pointed cycler's helmets hanging from a bush.

  It took him another minute to realize that what he thou
ght was a pile of blankets was actually another human being.

  The bile rose in his throat again. Two dead? How could that happen out here?

  "Hey!” he shouted down, mostly out of hope rather than any thought that someone would be alive after that crash. “Hey! You okay down there?"

  His voice sounded faint and ineffective against the surf pounding against the rocks below. On this side of the parking lot, he would have trouble hearing cars as they passed. He doubted anyone could have heard him talking to the poor dead guy in the can, or the beep-beep-beep of his truck as he'd parked.

  "Hey!” he shouted again. “You okay?"

  The person—a woman?—raised her head. He took two steps backward in surprise. He really hadn't thought that person was alive at all.

  But, he realized as he went back to the edge, she couldn't have gotten there by falling out of the tumbling car. She had to have slipped down the side, or pulled her way up from the bottom. She was resting on a rock ledge, and the reason he'd thought she was all blankets was because she had made a nest of her clothing.

  She had been there a while, and judging by the claw marks in the loose dirt above her, she'd tried to climb up more than once.

  "Hello!” he shouted. “You all right?"

  She nodded but held up hands scraped and filthy, just in case he didn't get the point. She shouted something at him.

  "I didn't get that,” he yelled back.

  She shouted again, only slower. He read her lips more than heard her. She said, “The ledge is crumbling."

  Great. Now if he went away and she died, it would be his fault. He had to get her out of there, without hurting her or him, or killing them both.

  He didn't have rope, but he did have the thick cords, which his colleagues incorrectly called bungees, that he wrapped around the new portable toilet in the back. He had extra cords just in case he had to do a pick-up or seal a door on a malfunctioning toilet until he could come back to it.

  "I'll be back in a minute,” he yelled to the woman, hoping she could hear him over the surf. He ran—he hadn't run since college; his knees ached, and he suddenly realized how out of shape he had let himself become—and reached the side of the truck in what seemed like forever. He could imagine the crumbling ledge in his mind, the way that the rock shifted, the unsteadiness of it; a slight movement would make it fall away altogether.

  First, breathe. Thank God for Coach Stevens. The man's instructions were in his head—they were about football, but they'd have to do. Oscar had never been in another situation like this.

  He breathed. Then he realized he had to test the cords to see if he could hook them together in a way that would hold. The older ones had frayed hooks and pulls. He tossed those in the truck bed and removed the newer ones from the new toilet. If someone drove up on this deserted road and stole the damn thing, so be it. His employers would have to understand.

  It took him a minute to hook the cords together, but they seemed stable enough to get a small woman up a crumbling hillside. Not that he had any way of measuring this.

  Still, he wasn't sure his back could take the weight. He unhooked the bungees at the back of the truck, then he lowered the gate. He eased the new portable off, using his back and knees like he always did when he put a new toilet in place.

  It looked kinda funny next to the old toilet, but he couldn't worry about that.

  He raised the gate, then hooked it in place. He got in the truck and backed toward the guard rail.

  He tried not to think about the cracking asphalt. He told himself that the broken guard rail had happened when the station wagon went through it, not when the ground fell away, but he didn't lie that well, not even to himself.

  He stopped the truck several yards from the guard rail. He couldn't quite bring himself to get as close as possible: The last thing he wanted to do was save her and then have the entire cliffside crumble beneath her, him, and the truck.

  He didn't want to hook the cords to the back gate—it was too unstable—so he found a thick piece of metal near one of the wheel wells. Then he unspooled the cords and hurried to the guard rail.

  As he looked over, he prayed that she was still there. The movement of the truck could shake earth this unstable, and that would be the last straw for that ledge.

  But she was still there, crouched against the side, the blue ocean beneath her, crashing into the rocks and spraying foam up the grass and sand hillside.

  He held up the cord, but before he tossed it, he mimed tying it around his stomach.

  "Knot yourself in,” he shouted. “You got that? Tie this around you. Don't rely on your hands to hold it."

  He wasn't sure how much she got of that, but she nodded. He swallowed hard and tossed the cords, listening to them clang as the metal hooks hit rock on the way down.

  The cords curved over the guard rail because he couldn't think of any other way to do it. She reached up, missed, then reached again. He kept feeding cord to her. As he did, he studied the guard rail.

  This part looked safe enough. The base was embedded into the earth, and the ground looked solid—not that he could tell, really, but he had to trust something.

  He'd try to pull her up himself first, and if that didn't work, then he'd use the truck. If he just used the truck by itself, he was afraid he'd use too much speed, or it wouldn't work and she'd fall and he wouldn't know until the cord came up empty, bouncing on the asphalt.

  He almost wrapped the loose back end of the cord around himself before it tightened in the woman's hands, but at the last minute, he decided not to. What if she was heavier than he expected? What if she pulled him over the edge?

  Then they'd both be screwed.

  He wiped his hands on his pants, then gripped the cord tightly. She was balanced precariously on that ledge, trying to make a half hitch with the cord and her own body. She seemed to have some kind of wilderness experience, or maybe she was just one of those really competent people who knew how to do things like hitch a rope to themselves.

  He watched her, his mouth dry.

  Then she gripped the cord, much like he was, and tugged just a little. He started to pull, but as he did, she placed her feet on the cliffside wall and climbed like she'd done this before.

  She was using his strength and his balance to give her a foundation, but she was pulling herself up. One hand over the other, one step at a time, she was coming up that hillside.

  He kept the cord taut, praying it wouldn't separate, praying he had the right ones—the ones that wouldn't fray.

  What if they frayed whenever pressure was applied to them?

  God, he had to make that voice in his head shut up. He hadn't realized how very annoying it was until now.

  The woman stopped halfway and shook one of her hands like it hurt. He bit his lower lip, tasting blood.

  C'mon, honey, he thought. Just a little more.

  He didn't want to pull and dislodge her.

  She put her hand back on the cord and continued, shaking that hand whenever it wasn't the dominant one.

  As she got closer, he realized she wasn't as young as he thought. Her face had that unnatural thinness that middle-aged smokers or those weird vegetarians who didn't eat anything good or people with cancer had. Her skin was tan and sallow at the same time, but he figured that might be because she had been on the ledge. Her hair was tangled with leaves and brush and dirt.

  He could hear her breathe, which reminded him to do it. He breathed, feeling the strain in his back as she got closer.

  Finally she was within his reach. He bent over the guard rail—metal poking into his stomach—and offered her his hand. He had as firm a grip as he could on the cord with his other hand.

  She looked at it, like she was unwilling to let go of the cord. Then she let go with her bad hand and reached toward his, missing his fingers entirely and clamping onto his wrist.

  He had no choice but to take her wrist. Considering how wet her hand felt against his skin, this was a better choice. No
sliding apart—no bad movie moment when their hands touch and then separate, followed by a scream as she fell to her death.

  He tugged, the muscles in his back pulling as he yanked her from an odd angle. She scrambled up the side, collapsed against the guard rail, and let him pull her over it.

  He had to grab onto her belt to do it. They fell backward. He took the brunt of the fall, landing on asphalt and still-wrapped cord. Pain shuddered through him, the familiar pain of a bad tackle, and his eyes watered.

  She lay on top of him, and for a minute, he wondered if he'd hurt her. Then she rolled off and let out a huge sigh.

  "Oh God,” she said in a curiously flat tone. “Did I hurt you?"

  "No,” he lied. He wanted to stay on his back, but he didn't dare. As Coach Stevens used to say, only babies rested.

  He sat up. She was peering at him as if she didn't quite recognize him, as if she didn't remember what he had done.

  He smiled reassuringly, but she didn't smile back. Instead, she wiped at her face with the back of one hand. The dirt flaked off her cheek, and that was when he realized that she wasn't covered in dirt; she was covered in dried blood.

  "What happened to you?” he asked, thinking he could mask his growing panic, but something of it must have shown in his face or in his voice because her eyes widened.

  "I fell,” she said in that flat tone. Emotionless, almost cold. Was she talking like that because she was in shock?

  "I can see that,” he said. “Were you in the car? Is anyone else in the car?"

  She wiped at her face again, then licked her chapped lips. Her hands were the worst. They were covered in real dirt and dried blood. On her right hand, her fingernails were gone.

  "I don't remember,” she said, but this time her voice warbled.

  "You don't remember if anyone else is in the car?"

  She shook her head. “What happened?"

  He frowned. She was wearing black leather shoes with some kind of heel. Scuffed and ruined now, they had the look of shoes that cost money.