by Gail Giles
I knew not to argue. I put on the jacket.
“What is that?”
Sam was holding what looked like a diaper with a big metal hook on it.
“Harness. It’s what you use to ride the wire. You step in, snug up the ties, and you hike out and hook this in the metal thingy on the wire so you can swing out over the water and balance the boat when the hull flies up.”
I pulled on the harness. The metal hook rested right about crotch level.
“I’m going to hang over the water from a wire by my crotch?”
“Yeah, it’s awesome.”
“I’m going to die.”
“Well, sure, someday,” Sam said.
We pushed the catamaran out until it floated. “Jump on there, grab the jib line, and be ready to haul it in when I say ‘go.’”
I did. She hopped on after me, hauled in the mainsheet, and shouted “GO!”
I hauled in the jib; Sam locked the rudders down and turned them at a forty-five-degree angle to the wind. “Hang on, we’re going over this big wave.”
Hang on? To what? I saw Sam push her feet under some loops sewn into the trampoline on the deck of the boat, but before I could do the same, the boat shot out over the crest of the wave and banged into the trough behind it.
The boat kind of fell out from under me and I crashed down on top of the aluminum side bar, my knee catching the jib cleat.
“What was that?” I shouted.
“That was the worst part. The rest is nirvana.”
I didn’t know if I was thrilled or scared. I do know this girl could have taken on the entire Loon Platoon bare-handed.
“I’m going to tack through the wind,” Sam shouted. “Watch your head; the boom will swing over. When it does, release the starboard jib cleat, move to port, grab that cleat, and haul it in.”
Carrie was right. This was school.
But when it was all done, I didn’t have a concussion, and the catamaran wasn’t bucking the wind and water. It slicked through the glassy green water with a silver-cool ease and speed that made my heart thump. Sam called it a broad reach.
I scooted back beside Sam. My heart thumped a little harder. When she was out of reach and giving orders like a marine I was kind of okay, but in touching distance . . . I had a physical reaction to the girl.
We sailed the rest of the morning. I took the helm a couple times. I even went out on the wire, with Sam holding my hand to help. I wondered if I had ever had such a perfect day.
Perfect.
I couldn’t let that happen.
Chapter 22
THE LONG SPOONS
“I’m Dr. Martin. Sit anywhere. I’ve read your file. I’ve talked to Dr. Schofield in Anchorage, and” — he flipped though my papers — “your doctor in Indiana.”
“Dr. Lyman.” I sat in the chair across from his. He didn’t sit behind a desk. I knew how to interpret this. No barriers here, Wade, my lad. Just us guys, chatting the chat.
“Poor woman,” Dr. Martin said. “What a crappy name for someone in therapy. How can anyone trust a doctor named ‘Lie Man’?”
Okay, maybe I was going to like this guy. He was pudgy with thinning blond hair, but he cut it short on top rather than try for the ridiculous comb-over.
“So, you’re here because you screwed yourself over in Indiana, right?”
“Wow,” I said. I felt like he’d punched me.
“That’s not what happened?” he asked.
“No, that’s exactly what happened, but I’m not used to the approach.”
“You want me to ask leading questions and kind of coddle you along?”
I thought a long minute. “No, I don’t think I do. It hasn’t worked all that well for me so far.”
“That’s what I’m seeing in the file,” he said.
I sat. I didn’t know what to do with this. This was therapy turned on its side.
“What’s your goal, Wade?”
“To be happy,” I muttered.
“Bullshit.”
I stared.
“You had happy. All wrapped up in a bow. Star swimmer. Lots of friends. Cute girlfriend. The works. And you threw it away. At a campfire, I might add. You’re so scared of happy it makes you crap your shorts.”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard. What’s your problem? What’s with the self-destruct?” He thumped the file. “Look at the size of this puppy. You’ve had way too much therapy not to know what you did to yourself. You even know how to avoid it. So what the hell were you doing that night?”
This bozo wanted to test me? I could test, too. “I was feeding a hungry ghost.”
“Oh, that Zen stuff,” he said, like this was from Shrink School for the Seriously Stupid. “Well, if you’re gonna go the mystic route on me, remember you gotta feed a ghost truth. With the long spoons — you know that part?”
Shit.
“Didn’t think so.” He pitched my file on a small table by his chair. “Here’s how it goes. The ghost has the truth set out in front of him in a bowl, all ready for him to eat. And he’s screaming for it, he’s so hungry. But the only thing he has to eat it with is a long spoon. His arms are too short for him to get the truth into the spoon and then into his mouth. So he finds another ghost with the same problem and they sit across from each other and . . .”
“Feed each other,” I whispered.
“Gold star. Now, since I’m thinking you might be a little dim,” he thumped the thick file again, “what’s this tidy metaphor mean to you?”
I shrugged.
“I hate that teenage shrugging crap. Think.”
I didn’t know if I wanted to hit him in the head for annoying me so much or hit myself in the head when I had the eureka moment.
“Everybody needs help.”
Martin snapped his fingers. “I officially have hope for you. And an assignment. Stop looking forward, and look back for a few days. You think you don’t deserve anyone’s respect. Check out the people that have stood behind you. Had your back. Knew what you did and still treated you like a human being. Make a list. Can you be so awful if those people support you?”
And that was it. Not boo or scat. He pointed to the door and waved his hands in a shooing motion. Fine by me. Crap my shorts? Was he supposed to talk to patients that way? TwoFer would have gutted him and filed his intestines in a drawer. If Cowboy were still alive he’d have target practice with him, and Slice ’N’ Dice would have . . . God only knows. But I hadn’t done anything. I hadn’t struck a match or doused him with gasoline. My head hadn’t even throbbed.
Carrie had lent me her car, so I drove back to the beach house and booted up the computer. I Googled as much as I could and found out a few things about the Loon Platoon, then called Doc Schofield.
TwoFer had been released, only to be killed by the police while he was stabbing the second person of the night in a gay bar. Slice had been transferred to adult prison after he attacked an orderly with a shank and cut off the man’s ear. The tough guy that had torched his sister’s cat went home on a weekend pass and set his parents’ house on fire. His whole family died. Now he wouldn’t have to ask anyone what it felt like to burn a person.
We talked a little more and Doc got downright tickled when I told him about the new shrink and his attitude. “Wade, when you make the list of the people that would stand behind you, have your back, or whatever — make sure my name is there. And not because they paid me to take care of you. Think about the kids we just talked about. I wouldn’t stand anywhere near them without a guard.”
I walked outside and sat on a deck chair, watching the waves. Sam drove in from her classes, waved, and walked over. Plopping herself in the chair next to mine, she slouched down, propped her feet up on the railing, and stretched her arms out behind her to cradle her neck. I didn’t think I’d ever seen a person so relaxed. And it was the first time I had seen Sam so relaxed.
“Deep thoughts?”
I nodded.
“Want to talk ab
out it?”
I did, but how could I tell her part of the story without telling the heart of it?
“Complicated,” I said.
“What isn’t?”
“I don’t know you all that well to be having personal conversations,” I said.
“True, but you look like you want to talk, and sometimes a stranger is more objective. How do you think shrinks stay in business?”
She had a point. Had Sam been to a shrink?
I thought some more. How could I get to what was bothering me without telling her? I was good at cover stories, so why not? “I was online checking out the lo-cal paper from the town I used to live in,” I said. “A guy I was friends with — not good friends, but friendly — -got in some serious trouble. Bad shit. I never saw that in him.”
Sam shifted her arms and crossed them over her chest. She seemed a little uncomfortable, but it was like everything else with me — upending the first beer, the constant swim practice — once I start . . . “Reading about it, I got to thinking. If I didn’t see him heading into that kind of trouble — what’s that say about me?”
I wasn’t looking at Sam. I was talking to the water, but I was aware that she had pulled her feet off the rail. “I don’t want to go all drama and moody on you, but do you ever wonder about yourself? If you’re a bad person?”
There. I’d gotten it out. I looked over at Sam.
And the relaxed mood was gone. Sam did the personality switch she had done the night she bailed on dinner.
“I might not be the best person to talk to about that.” She uncrossed her arms and rubbed her palms on the knees of her jeans. “Why do you care about being a bad person? Are you one?”
“No fair. I asked you the question first,” I said.
“Let it go, Wade.” Her voice wasn’t a warning — it was a plea. But I wasn’t sure for what.
“Dad told me once that if you worry about being a bad person, you probably aren’t one. He thinks bad people don’t give a shit,” I said.
Sam sort of softened, loosened. The shade of a smile drifted across her mouth. “I like that.” She eased back in the chair again, but rewrapped her arms across herself. “I want to believe it. Your dad’s a smart guy. Would he hang with a bad person?” She slid her eyes to mine, questioning.
Dad. How easy would it have been for him to dump me? Just bail when I was in Anchorage? Hand me over to Aunt Jemma? But then Aunt Jemma had bailed. It would have been easy to make me a ward of the state. But he had stuck. He’d uprooted himself three times for me, changed his name, lost everything he owned. Would he have done it if I had gone rabid like TwoFer and Slice? Why hadn’t I? I had killed a child and those boys hadn’t. Why didn’t I turn mean? Did they feel guilt? Was guilt what saved me?
But the hungry ghost theory said I had to give up my guilt. That it hurt me and those around me. It made no sense.
My silence seemed to have made Sam twitchy.
“Let’s hit the water,” she said.
“Maybe that will blow the shit out of my head,” I said.
It did.
For a while anyway.
Chapter 23
PIECES OF FLINT
We sailed that afternoon with no further talk except for Sam’s commands. All her ease was gone, as if something about our conversation had turned her hard and tense. She drilled me about the mechanics of sailing, about the importance of the “slot” between the jib and the main, about the difference between a “tack” and a “jibe.”
“Now show me,” Sam said. I took control of the tiller and the main, brought the boat in-line so the bow wouldn’t dig under the water.
“So far so good.” Sam settled in. We were pretty far out, so I settled the boat into a reach and headed in toward the jetties, then I sailed Elton up and down the beach for another half hour.
“You ready to go in?”
Sam’s face was tilted up to the sun. I don’t know if she was watching the sails or just enjoying the warmth and the sky.
“You’re the skipper.”
“Let’s jibe.”
A jibe is a quick move and needs to be executed with the crew in sync. The boat almost pivots off the wave crest then runs down its back. It was more than a head rush. Full-body rush.
We surfed the waves, then Sam took the tiller. “You’re not quite ready for the landing. Watch what I do.”
As we plunged down the last big wave, Sam was watching the water, not the sail or the wind. When the waves were the right size for her, she abruptly let out the main and jerked the rudder bar forward and up. The Hobie slid onto the sand, skidded up the slope of the beach a few feet, and stopped.
“And that’s the way it’s done,” I said.
“When nothing makes you lose focus,” Sam said.
She didn’t say much as we washed off the boat and put it in the shed.
Before, when we got close, I thought we were like pieces of flint, touching each other and creating sparks. Not now. We were just rocks clattering off one another.
I spent the next few days scraping paint and ignoring Sam’s comings and goings. She was a complication I didn’t need. When I came close she backed off. She gave no clues as to what I did wrong, how I’d messed up with her. She didn’t seem to want or need me. She seemed to spend a lot of time gone. At school, I guess.
“Hey.”
And one day there she was. Silhouetted by the sun in back of her. I had to shade my eyes with my hand and sweat drizzled in and stung.
“Hey, yourself.” Stunning comeback.
“What are you doing?”
I came down the ladder as Sam came up the stairs. We met on the deck. “You interrupted me in the middle of my own liver transplant. What’s it look like I’m doing?”
“Torturing your house.”
“I’m painting it.”
Sam nodded. “Gooooood job.”
“Wise-ass. I’m scraping it so I can paint it.”
“Looked to me like you were stabbing it to death. Must have been the angle.”
She smelled so . . . clean. I wanted . . . to drink in the smell of her. Live in the color of her hair. If I kept thinking like this, I’d need to drive the paint scraper through my temple. “I don’t have time to go sailing if that’s . . .”
“Nope, you don’t. Carrie called my house from work because you weren’t picking up your phone.”
I looked at the ladder then back at the house.
“Yeah, she figured you were out here ‘attacking our domicile’ was how she put it. She said to take a shower and come pick her up. She let you drive her to work?”
“Oh, no. Carrie says I drive like a grandmother.”
“I’ll bet you don’t drive like Carrie’s grandmother.”
Sometimes against all plans of being depressed, sulky, and dark all your life, a smile or a laugh sneaks out of you. Guerrilla laughter. Happened right then.
“Nope, I can picture Carrie’s grandmother going ninety and running up on a teenager’s bumper and blasting her horn for him to get with the program or get out of her way.”
“I’ll ride with you, if you like. I’m sick of school stuff. I want a popcorn book, let my mind go on vacation, you know?”
I did know.
We chatted easily in the car, Sam telling me that I could take some courses at the JC like she did, which could count for dual credit as high school and college work. I was wondering if she was bipolar because every time we got a little close she ran away. Kind of like I did with AC. Then it hit me — that maybe it seemed like Sam ran so far because I had run the opposite direction.
The real trouble started the minute we stepped into the bookstore.
Chapter 24
FINDING OUT
“We’re early. Carrie’s not off for twenty minutes. I’ll buy you coffee. Mochaccino. It’s good here.”
“Sure,” Sam said, then she stopped so suddenly I almost ran into her back. Her stiffened back.
I looked ahead of Sam to see what had sto
pped her in her tracks, and saw Jessica at the coffee bar. One hand holding a metal cup of frothed milk, Jessica was frozen in motion, statuelike, for a few seconds. She appeared shocked, then her eyes drilled me, her anger apparent.
“Jessica,” I said. “This is Sam. Straight up coffee for me and a . . .”
“Nothing for me, thanks,” Sam said. She perched on the stool. She seemed more to hover over it like a hummingbird, ready to flit away at any hint of motion or noise.
“Oh, I know Sam,” Jessica said. “Everybody knows Sam.”
Jessica said it pleasantly enough. But it had that under-current. That “girl” thing that guys hear but can’t quite interpret. She poured my coffee and slid it to me.
“I’m going to check the used section for a mystery or something trashy,” Sam said.
Sam slid off the stool and took a couple of steps when Jessica said under her breath, “You can find trashy in your mirror.”
Sam pulled her shoulders back slightly and her chin pointed up a little higher, but she didn’t miss a step as she headed to the used-books loft.
“What was that about?” My coffee slopped over the rim of my cup as I banged it down on the counter.
Jessica wiped up the mess in short, angry swipes.
“I know you live next door to her, but you don’t have to hang out with her. And don’t come in here and expect me to serve her. That’s shoving her right in my face.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Her. Sam. Don’t come in here with her. People know you and I have gone out a few times. It’s disrespect-ing me.”
“I repeat: What are you talking about?”
“Sam. She’s called ‘Wham, Bam, Thank You, Sam.’ Do you know why she doesn’t go to high school anymore?”
I moved to shake my head, but Jessica rushed on before I even had a chance.
“Because she’s too ashamed to, that’s why. No one would speak to her if she did. She went from being a drunk to being a ho.”
I had no words. I guess Jessica could see that.
“Ask anybody. Ask my mom. Sam would have sex with anybody that gave her liquor. I bet she can’t count the times she passed out and woke up without her underwear. She finally went to rehab. I think she got all her high school credits there or some story like that. Who knows? Good riddance to bad rubbish is what my mom said.”
