by Carrie Mac
“And may his soul rest in eternal peace, no matter where his earthly body is. Amen. Now I’ve really got to call them back,” she says. “They didn’t take kindly to me hanging up on them. But it’s just fine to stop everything for a prayer.” She goes back to the phone and makes the call. At some point, she hands the phone to me.
I tell the woman on the phone about our bright orange tent in the middle of the clearing by the creek about five miles north of the first cabin up from where I am. I say no, I’m not hurt. Which is a complete and utter lie.
* * *
—
She says the sheriff will be there in half an hour. She says to stay put. She says she’ll call my dad. And Pete’s. She says I’ve been so strong. I did good. It’s all over now.
“Oh, you are so brave. I just can’t imagine. Thank goodness you knew what to do.” She sits me behind the counter with her, even though there are tables near the coffee machine. I sit there with Otis Creek at my feet, clutching the diary.
“What you got there, honey?”
“Nothing.”
“Your diary?”
I shake my head.
“That boy’s diary?”
“No.” I peel off the duct tape and take it out of the bag.
“It’s pretty,” Mrs. Hodges says.
“My mom gave it to me,” I say. “Just before she died.”
“Oh.” The bell above the door rings. A customer, heading for the terrible coffee. “I bet that’s been really special for you. A real comfort since her passing. I am sorry for your loss. Was that a long time ago?”
“When I was twelve.”
“Oh dear,” Mrs. Hodges says. “So hard to lose a mother at a young age. I’ll pray for you.”
The customer pays, then leaves. I get up and squeeze past Mrs. Hodges.
“I’m going to wait at the picnic table for the sheriff,” I say. “I just need some fresh air.”
* * *
—
I flip to the pages Pete wrote.
Dear Annie,
If you are reading this, then I did die, right?
I’m okay with that.
Not the dying part, but the here-with-you part.
All that you need to know is that I love you.
I’m scared, Annie.
It’s not your fault, and you have to know that’s true because it could’ve been you.
Annie. Please. Listen.
I’m so sorry.
It’s going to be hard, but you have to keep going on, because I am not going to be your excuse. Just think if it were you writing this letter. Think about what you would want for me.
What you want for me, I want so much for you too.
Consider this a contract between me and you for you to live both of our best lives, from this moment on.
I want for you to fill out the corners of your life for the two of us.
I miss you already.
And you will miss me.
Just don’t let go. Don’t let go of life.
Don’t let go of me, or your mom, or Gigi.
But don’t hold on too tight either.
I’m so sorry.
I love you.
xo
P.
PS. I never gave this journal to you, because when we were kids, I was afraid that it would make you more like her. I was going to give it to you now because I know that you’re not like her in that way, even if the sky goes dark for you sometimes.
When we picked up his ashes from the crematorium, Everett took a scoop and put it into a little vial he wears around his neck. With ash on his fingertips and red-rimmed eyes, he gave me the rest to scatter.
“Some with his mother, okay?”
I put his ashes into a coffee tin and did that stop first. The hill behind his house where her ashes were scattered. Then I buckled the tin into the passenger seat of Pete’s truck and drove to the first of our places.
I scattered some of his ashes at the agate beach, at the spot where he saw that big, golden rock that almost killed him.
I scattered some at the elementary school, where we met.
I scattered some at our tree house, or the remains of it.
And of course, Otis Creek, our own private world out of time and place.
Ugly Mug, the swimming pool, our fishing hole, and the bridge we liked to jump off of, into the river.
The front steps of his house. The front steps of my house. My backyard, his backyard, Preet’s car—when she wasn’t looking—and the corner where we had our lemonade stands.
I even found Ty and Paola at their rock and gem shop and tried to give them some of his ashes to take up to where they showed us the crystals, but they both shook their heads as I talked. They led me out the back door and into their truck with two quads strapped in the back and straight up to the crystal site, while Spencer barked and barked and Otis lay across my lap, yawning.
* * *
—
Just one more place to go.
Preet is with me, kitted out in borrowed clothes, my old backpack, and brand-new boots. I tried to talk her out of brand-new boots—hiking boots, no less—but she insisted. I have an entire package of moleskin. I imagine that we will use it all. I’ve described the terrain to her, but I don’t think she gets it. I think she sees it like a movie. Flat, with all those dangerous features you’d see on a movie set on a mountain, with two kids in trouble and some wolves.
Otis is with me too. He hasn’t left my side since that day we met by the river. After we stop in at Hodges Corner Store and endure rib-breaking hugs from Mrs. Hodges, we drive Pete’s truck up to Shook’s cabin. I want to give him a bag of groceries and apologize for taking his dog.
“It’s no matter,” he says as he pats Otis’s now much bigger head. “Wasn’t never mine anyway, and I’m glad I don’t have to feed him. I’m glad he brought you some comfort. I imagine he has?”
“We go everywhere together,” I say. “He’s my best friend,” I add. It’s true. Better to have a dog as a best friend than pity the person who would ever attempt to take Pete’s place. “I’m thankful for him every single day, sir.”
He puts out a hand for Preet to shake. She does, smiling.
“Who’s this young lady you’ve brought with you?”
“Pete’s girlfriend,” I say.
“Oh, well now.” His voice grows husky. “I’m very sorry for your loss, then.”
“Thank you,” Preet says.
“Would you walk us back to where you found me?” I ask. I want to cross the river and get cold again. I want to feel just a tiny bit of what I felt that day. Preet pales. I’ve told her about this part, prepared her for it. Told her it would be like a baptism.
The Church of the Unforgiving Wilderness.
“I could,” he says. “But if you drive up three miles, there’s a little suspension bridge I imagine would be a lot more comfortable. Just have to backtrack on the other side.” He glances at Preet. Smooth skin. Perfect braids. Obviously brand-new bandana covering her head.
It’s a hot day. The river is low.
I want to walk through it.
Preet will do whatever I tell her to. She’s already told me that.
“I’d like to go back the way I came,” I say. “It means a lot to me.”
He shrugs. “Least take off your clothes when you cross,” he says, rummaging under a cabinet for a couple of dirty black garbage bags. “No need to be soaking wet on the other side.”
He walks us up to the spot and asks me what I’m doing with my truck.
“When are you coming back?”
“We’re hiking through,” I say. “We parked Preet’s car at the other end of the trail. The truck is for you. The papers are signed. In the glove box. You j
ust have to fill in your parts, if you want it.”
Because words can’t do the job I need them to. Words can’t stake out the shape this old man took in making me who I am. The respite, just that one night, was so important. Most of all, I can’t imagine life without Otis, and I have Shook to thank for him.
“You’re giving me your truck?” His eyes go a little damp. “I’d say I don’t need it, but you’ve seen mine.”
“That’s more of a chicken coop than a truck now. I’d like to give you this truck,” I say. “Pete’s truck. Please let me do this?”
“Let you? Well now.” He shoves his hands in his pockets, and for a moment he looks like a tall, gangly teenager, with pink cheeks. And not a clue what to say. I can imagine Pete like this. Living here. Driving into town on an ATV. And I know for a fact that he can use the truck.
“How about this?” I hold out the keys. “How about I leave it here until I come back to get it? The insurance is paid up. And it’s got a mostly full tank of gas. And I even made this ramp….”
I reach into the back and pull out a plank of wood that I covered in carpet.
“What the heck?”
I open the passenger door and set the ramp in place. His old dog knows exactly what it’s for. He plods up it and onto the seat and curls into a greasy old ball.
“I am a grateful man, darling.” He gives me an awkward hug.
* * *
—
“Annie,” Preet says from the rocky edge of the river. “We should get going, right?”
“You should,” Shook says. “But first I want to tell you a little funny thing. Last time you came, that first time, you met Shook. But that’s not my real name.”
“I didn’t think so.”
“I’m a Pete too,” he says. “Peter Svendsen. It only occurred to me to tell you that after I heard about your friend.”
For a few moments, I am hanging suspended in a small tear in the space-time continuum. This could’ve been Pete, decades from now. He might’ve looked like this old man. He could’ve lived like Shook, by a river, up a mountain, with grandkids coming and going. Off the grid, having outlived his wife and missing her still.
But not the rabbits on his belt.
Not his trapline.
Not how he’d vote, based on the stickers in the window of his dead truck.
This man is not Pete.
But he has a lot in common with him anyway.
Generous, forgiving, kind, capable, and happy to help.
“We’re doing this, Preet!” I toss my pack into one of the garbage bags and put hers into the other. “Get as naked as you want.”
I turn to make some joke about not watching us strip, but Shook is gone. I can see the blue of his baseball cap getting smaller and smaller down the trail. He isn’t worried about us, not beyond us getting our things wet.
I strip down naked, and seeing me, Preet does the same.
We balance the plastic bags on our heads and step into the river.
“Oh my goodness!” Preet sucks in her breath. “We have to do it fast.” She starts to pull away from me.
“No!” I hold her hand tight. “We have to do this so that we don’t fall.” The current pushes at our sides. “The rocks will be slippery. Small steps. That’s why it’s actually better to wear your boots, but we need them dry. I’ll take the chance.”
“We should’ve taken the bridge!” Preet yelps as the water covers her waist.
* * *
—
We make it across without falling. Preet dances and dances.
“I can’t believe that we did that! I just crossed a river. Naked!” She stops, facing the hot sun, and is quiet while I rearrange the packs.
“Come on,” I finally say. “Let’s get going.”
* * *
—
Even though the forest is nearly all scorched to the west and south, I find the spot right away. Not because I suddenly know it in my bones, but because when search and rescue came to get Pete—Pete’s body—they left everything else. The tent is exactly where I left it, weighed down by our things inside. The orange nylon is sun-faded, and the whole thing is streaked with dirt and still smells of smoke. I stand there, staring at it, willing Pete to be in there. Willing away the last year. Willing everything in fast rewind to that day when he brought pakora and falafel.
The wildfire shifted while it was still west of him, angling north and staying above him, but only by about five hundred feet. Although he always said it would be cool to die in a forest fire if he had to die, I know that was bluster. It would be terrifying to watch the flames get close. I’m glad that he didn’t have to. When I see the tent, I am momentarily surprised that it’s just a heap of flattened orange nylon, because despite my brain telling me otherwise, I think he should still be in there. This is the last place I saw him, after all. But life isn’t magical, no matter how much I wish it were. There are no unicorns jumping over rainbows.
The poles are still in their slots, and even though the rescuers cut the nylon to get Pete out, the poles still work to hold the tent up so that I can crawl in. My sleeping bag. His too. Sleeping mats. Empty coffee packets, chewed-through dried-milk bag, my dirty bowl, his dirty bowl, our sporks, and so much mouse poo. The notebook he’d been ripping pages from to make the origami unicorns. Pete’s other shirt, a moldy, stiff puck on the floor. This is just trash. I thought I would want to bring home every ounce of it, right down to the actual garbage of the coffee packets. But I can’t connect to these things that Pete and I brought here, that surrounded him when he died, that I walked away from. The things that I thought would be precious to me. Not dirty underwear and bowls peppered with mouse droppings.
Otis pushes in from behind me, but the tent with me and a rambunctious dog is far too small, so everything gets twisted and kicked around, and becomes even less precious, with Otis jumping and trying to catch the nylon in his teeth.
“Back up, Otis.” There’s the bottle of Gigi’s THC tincture, hardly any worse for wear. I could pick it up and put it in my pocket. I could keep it. Use it. No, Annie. You won’t. You’ve been clean and sober ever since you were up here with me. Sometimes I hear Pete, even now, whether I want to or not. “All right, all right,” I say, grabbing on to Otis’s collar. I untangle us from the tent and shimmy backward out into the sunshine, laughing as Otis steps all over me.
“Annie?” A hand on my shoulder. Surprised, I wrench away in one quick movement before I remember that Preet is with me. She’s crying, but she’s the one who asks if I’m okay.
“Yeah. I’m okay.” I sit on the dirt and Otis climbs into my lap. Preet goes ahead and pulls the tent poles out, then turns the nylon upside down and shakes everything out. Now with just the faded orange material, she takes a pair of scissors from her backpack and starts cutting it into strips.
“What are you doing?”
“We’re going to make prayer flags.” She gets out a second pair of scissors and hands them to me. “Start cutting.”
I should mind this, but I don’t. This isn’t her space, or her tent, or her story, even. Not up here, it isn’t. It’s her story from when I phoned her in India, but up here it’s still all mine. Yet I start cutting up Pete’s sleeping bag, glancing at what she’s doing so my squares are about the same size as hers.
“Where did he die?” Preet holds a swath of the tent in her hands, as if holding orange flames, spilling down.
“In the tent.”
“You said you dragged him into the clearing after,” Preet says. “So they could find him. I want to know exactly where he died. Take me into the forest and show me. I want to see where we can hang the flags.”
I look for the log that was like a bench. For the flattened space that might not be there anymore after a winter of rain and wind and snow and the forest going on without us. Then I see
a tiny, glinting something on the ground ahead of me. It’s the crystal from my tin of talismans!
“It was here,” I say. “See?” I show her the crystal, and then I clear away more pine needles and pinecones and wind-fallen branches, looking for the rest of my little treasures. “Our tent was right here. We were trying to get some cover from the sun, and the ash too.”
I don’t find another talisman, just one of the bags we were using for water and a flavor packet for ramen noodles.
Preet shakes her head, eyes welling with tears.
“This isn’t the right spot,” she says. “Come on.”
* * *
—
She leads me back to the edge of the clearing, where Otis is rolling in something likely very gross. “We’ll string them between the two oak trees,” she says. “I don’t want them in the forest, if that’s okay with you. It’s dark in there, and too close to the burned trees.”
“Okay,” I say, because I’m not sure if this is meaningful to me at all, and if it is to her, then she can have it. Preet lies down under the big oak tree, on her back, looking up through the pines, and then she turns her head to look through the hopeful spring growth, the bright green leaves almost glowing in the sunlight. “This is the perfect spot. Out in the sunshine, where the trees are still green and living.”
I don’t even hesitate. I lie down beside her and offer my arm. She rests her head on it, and we both stare through the dancing, shimmering green. Otis curls against my side. All three of us fall asleep like that.
* * *
—
When I wake up, Preet is sewing the orange squares onto the seams of the tent, which she’s cut into one long piece. She’s written on many of them, but I don’t want to know what they say.
“These are for you.” She hands me a bunch, and I realize, looking around, that she’s cut up the entire tent, plus Pete’s shirt, which she must’ve washed in the creek, and the two sleeping bags. She’s made enough ribbon that it could probably stretch all the way to the creek, and I wonder if that’s her plan. She hands me the marker. “You can make a wish, or say a prayer for him. Or you don’t have to do anything.”