McCall

by Patricia Evans Jordan

  “Wait,” Sara said, “So that’s who has all that land between my cabin and Ponderosa National Park?”

  “Yep,” Mary said, plucking the rest of Sara’s cinnamon roll off her napkin and popping it in her mouth. “Somewhere around 170 acres.”

  Sara was speechless. She didn’t know what she was expecting, but that was not it.

  ****

  Sam pulled up a few minutes late that evening and knocked with her elbow, her arms full of brown paper bags. She was wearing faded Levis low on her hips with a leather belt and a black T-shirt that highlighted the definition in her arms.

  “Good lord,” Sara said, opening the door and taking a bag from her. “What did you bring?”

  “I’m grilling steaks and doing garlic potatoes in the coals,” Sam said, setting her bags down on the kitchen counter.

  “Wait,” Sara said, “I thought you couldn’t cook.”

  “Any card carrying butch can grill a steak.”

  “There’s a card?” Sara said. “I’m gonna need to see that.”

  “Forget I said that,” Sam said, dropping her voice to a whisper. “We’re not supposed to tell anyone.”

  “I won’t tell anybody.” She paused, her breath warm against Sam’s ear. “If you’re lucky.”

  “I might be able to arrest you for it if you do,” Sam said. “I’ll have to check the butch handbook.”

  Sara laughed, heading for the kitchen with one of the bags. “Be sure and let me know the regulations on that.”

  An hour later, the coals were screaming hot and the potatoes Sam had stuffed with whole garlic cloves and obscene amounts of butter were almost ready. She’d wrapped them in foil and they’d been buried under the red-hot coals for the last forty-five minutes.

  “Okay,” Sam said, “I think I’m ready for the steaks.”

  Sara had just handed them to her, stacked and wrapped in brown butcher paper, when they heard a car pull into the drive. Thirty seconds later, Jennifer burst through the door, pushing a bike, a bright turquoise beach cruiser with a white leather seat.

  “Sara,” she yelled up to the loft, “Look what I bought!”

  Sara and Sam opened the screen door from the deck.

  “We’re out here,” Sara said, holding the door open for Jennifer.

  Jennifer stopped in her tracks, leaning the bike against the wall. “Oh,” she said, suddenly unsure, “I’m sorry; I didn’t know you had company.”

  Sam leaned into sight, still at the grill. “What are you talking about?” She pointed at the coals with the spatula. “I brought steak for all three of us. I just need to know how you like it.”

  Sara watched Jennifer’s face relax into a smile as she started chattering to Sam about her new bike. It was good to see her like this. She didn’t know if it was the swimming or Sam that’d started to make the difference, but it didn’t matter. Her sister looked almost happy, and until tonight, she hadn’t realized how many years it’d been since she’d seen that.

  A few minutes later, they were sitting around the table, and Jennifer looked over at Sara.

  “Hey,” she said, “I talked to Trevor today.”

  “Whoa, what?” Sara said, her fork halfway to her mouth. “What did he say?”

  Jennifer pushed a piece of potato around on her plate with her fork. “He said he’d made a mistake, and that he wants me to come back home.”

  Sara and Sam looked at each other briefly, then Sam got up and busied herself with searching the fridge for another beer.

  “And what do you want?” Sara said.

  “To be honest, it felt like deja vu,” Jennifer said. “He cheated on me the day before Christmas last year, and he said the exact same thing after I found out.”

  “What?” Sara shook her head. “You never told me!”

  “I was embarrassed,” Jennifer said, lifting her bite of potato to her mouth then putting it back on her plate. “I didn’t want you to think less of me.”

  “Why the hell would I think less of you because your husband is a cheating…” Sara searched for the words.

  “A cheating asshat,” Sam said, with a nod to Jennifer. “I think that title has already been established.”

  “True,” Jennifer said. “Anyway, I went to see a lawyer in town today.” She turned to Sam. “Is it true that there’s only one lawyer in the whole town?”

  “Yes,” Sara and Sam answered together.

  “Well, I went to see him and started divorce proceedings.” She put a small bite of steak in her mouth. “I’m not going back to Memphis.”

  Sara dove for Jennifer and wrapped her in a tight hug. “Thank Christ,” she said. “I was afraid I was going to have to shoot him.”

  When Sara let her go, Sam touched Jennifer’s hand for just a second, looking her in the eyes. “Well done, girl.”

  Jennifer speared a piece of steak, but hesitated as she lifted it to her mouth.

  “I swear, Jen,” Sam said, leaning over and spearing three bites of her steak from her plate, “I’m going to eat your steak if you don’t get a move on.”

  Jennifer smiled and put the fork back in her mouth, scooting her plate closer to her and out of Sam’s reach. “Back off, Lake Cop,” she said. “Eat your own dinner.”

  ****

  Hours later, Sara walked Sam to her truck. “I’m sorry it got too late for us to go out on the water.”

  “I’ll see you in the morning anyway,” Sam said. “I’m coming over to swim to the island with her.” She ran her hand up Sara’s back, circling her neck with her fingertips. “But are you free after?” Sam stepped closer and bent to whisper in Sara’s ear. “I can’t stop thinking about you naked.”

  “I thought you might have forgotten that, Draper,” Sara said with a teasing look.

  “Trust me,” Sam said, her thumb lightly stroking Saras bottom lip. “That is impossible to forget.”

  After Sam left Sara’s house, she went back to the station to grab some papers she’d wanted to work on at home. The station was unusually quiet; most of the officers were out on patrol and the support staff all went home at five, so Sam buzzed herself through from the front desk and stepped into her office, turning the lights on and digging through her inbox for the incomplete incident reports she came back to find.

  “Hey,” a voice said behind her, “I didn’t see you come in.”

  Sam whipped around but it was just Lily, closing the door behind her and walking towards the desk. She had a white dress on that clashed perfectly with her Doc Marten boots Sam remembered from the nineties. Evidently, they were cool again.

  Sam sat down on the edge of her desk. “What do you need?”

  Lily edged herself between Sam’s thighs. “Are you really asking me that?”

  Sam’s nipples hardened under her shirt and she tried not to look at the front of the dress that Lily was unbuttoning.

  “Don’t.” Sam made a move to stand but it just brought her body closer to the heat of Lily’s skin.

  “Don’t what?” Lily leaned into Sam’s neck and ran her tongue down to the collar of her shirt.

  “Lily,” Sam said. She was aching to crumple that dress around her waist and sink to her knees, mouth buried in the slick heat of her. “Just don’t. I can’t.”

  She didn’t answer, just took Sam’s fingers and pressed them into her wet heat between her thighs, then slowly brought them up and sucked them into her mouth.

  “Goddamn, Lily,” Sam said, closing her eyes and trying not to think about how wet Lily was, how obviously ready she was for Sam to fuck her.

  “I can’t,” she said, pushing Lily gently away. “Not today.”

  Lily stepped back, unsettled, then buttoned her dress, and walked out. Sam watched out the window as she left the building and walked to her jeep.

  “Fuck,” she said, slumping down in her office chair. “Fuck.”

  ****

  The next morning, Sam met Jennifer on the dock in the late morning and they swam to Rock Island then on to Ocmulg
ee Island before heading back. Sam took a quick shower and changed, then found Sara leaning against the counter.

  “Where’s Jennifer?” Sam said. “She’s more than welcome to join us.”

  “She’s gone, actually. She was out of here in about two minutes; she said she ‘had to go see a man about a boat’.”

  “I’m not even going to guess what that means,” Sam said, “But it sounds like she’s up to something.”

  “You know what she did before she left?”

  “What?”

  “She made a peanut butter sandwich and actually ate it while she was getting ready. Whatever you said to her, it helped.”

  “It wasn’t me,” Sam said. “I think it’s the water. There’s just something about how it moves over you, or maybe it’s the silence underneath the surface. It just smooths the edges of whatever’s wrong after a while.”

  “I don’t believe that’s all it was for a second.” Sara smiled. “But thank you.”

  “You’re not doing terrible on the driving lessons, by the way,” Sam said, “So I brought something new. Have you seen it yet?”

  “What?” Sara followed her gaze out the window. A lake patrol boat was parked on the far side of Sara’s dock. “Oh no, I have a bad feeling about this.” She paused. “But it’s technically illegal for me to get another citation if I’m actually in a Lake Patrol boat you’re responsible for, right?”

  “Technically. If you can drive one inboard ski boat,” Sam said, “You can drive them all. Or you should be able to, at least.”

  Sam looked at Sara’s rolled up white chinos and cropped blue top that showed a slice of her tight abs when she moved, and wondered for a second if she was trying to distract her or if it just came naturally. “Are you ready to go?”

  Sara nodded, but once they were at the dock, she refused to drive the patrol boat, so Sam got behind the wheel and headed for the open water. She cut through the lake toward the far north side. Just as they were getting close, the radio on the control panel beeped and Sam picked it up.

  “This is Captain Draper, go ahead.”

  “Captain, this is Chief Davis, what is your location?”

  “Heading north toward Ponderosa,” Sam replied, her thumb on the radio handset button. “What’s going on?”

  “911 just got a call from the waterfront staff at Camp Montauk.” There was a pause then some static on the line. “They have a situation up there, but I can’t get anyone to tell me exactly what’s going on.”

  “Are there injuries?”

  “That’s not known at this time,” Chief Davis said, his voice crackling through the radio, “But it’s a possibility.”

  Sam slid the throttle to full speed, and Sara stood at the passenger’s seat, holding on the rail and looking forward to the Montauk camp docks, just coming into view on the horizon.

  Sam picked the radio back up, holding the button with her thumb. “Are EMS and Lake Patrol en route?” She said into the handset, the wind whipping the words from her mouth.

  “EMS has been dispatched,” the chief replied, “But Lake Patrol was working the regatta on the south side, so their ETA is ten minutes, minimum.”

  “We’re there in less than thirty seconds,” Sam said. “I’m on it.” Sam handed the handset to Sara. “I’m going to need to move quickly when I get there; you keep me posted on any radio communication right away,” she said, “Can you do that?”

  Sara nodded, her heart beating faster. As they neared the dock, she heard screaming and a crowd was forming on the docks, hovering behind the snapped boards and broken foam floats where it looked like the far end of the dock had snapped off and sunk towards the bottom of the lake. Sam headed straight for them, then slid the boat to a sudden stop with a sharp left turn, parallel to the dock, sending a spray of water ten feet into the air. The crowd had no choice but to back up off the ragged end of the broken dock. Sam shouted to the panicked staff that looked like they were frozen in place.

  “Get those people off the docks now; it’s sinking!”

  Everyone was screaming at once; it was impossible to hear what they were saying, but as the boat idled closer, Sara looked down and saw it.

  “Sam,” she said, squeezing her arm and pointing down into the water a few yards ahead, “Look.”

  Sam peered down into the water. “Jesus Christ,” Sam said, pulling off her clothes and shoes and tossing them aside.

  “I’m going in,” she said. “I need you to stop the boat here. Don’t let it come any closer; if the prop hits someone, it could kill them.”

  Sara nodded, and Sam dove into the water, disappearing towards the sunken vehicle several feet below the surface of the water. The screaming from the dock intensified, and Sara watched as it continued to splinter and sink.

  “Move those people back!” She shouted, waving an emergency flag she’d pulled from the glove compartment. “The dock is sinking underneath you!”

  That seemed to get through to them, and what seemed like hundreds of staff and campers slowly started to back up. The broken end of the dock facing Sara started to rise.

  “Keep going!” She called, gesturing with her hands for them to keep walking backwards.

  Just then, Sam broke the water’s surface for air and dove back under, re-emerging quickly with a dazed teenage girl. One of the waterfront staff dove into the water, took her from Sam’s arms, and started swimming back to another staff member laying on the edge of the splintered dock, holding his arms out to take her. Sam loaded air into her lungs and dove again.

  “How long have they been under?” Sara shouted towards the dock.

  The staff member on the end who had pulled the girl onto the dock shouted back, “The dock broke off when they drove the car out on it and it sank so fast. They tried to open the doors but they wouldn’t open. It was a minute or so before…” He paused. “They didn’t go under until right before you got here.”

  Sam emerged with another teenager, a boy, and passed him off to the staff member who’d been treading water and waiting.

  “How many were in there?” Sara called out.

  “I think just three,” The staff member said, a question hovering in his voice. He shouted behind him again for everyone to back up and be quiet so he could hear.

  “They were driving the car onto the dock as a prank; they were already out there before anyone knew to look.”

  Sara heard the Lake Patrol boats in the distance, but she could tell by the sound that it’d be several minutes before they arrived, even at full speed.

  Sam suddenly surfaced again, forcing in breath and sinking under the water again. Sara saw her under the murky layers of water, dragging a body out of the front passenger’s side, holding him under the arms and breaking the surface in a rush, pushing him into the arms of the waiting staff. He was barely conscious, choking and trying to breathe. Sam started to swim underwater toward the dock behind them, just as Sara caught sight of something out of the corner of her eye. Blond hair had floated up to the dark surface of the rear view window like a ghost in a mirror. She started to shout to Sam but saw that she was underwater, looking towards the lake floor under the broken edge of the dock, searching for campers that might have fallen and gotten trapped when it split open.

  Sara dropped her clothes and dove in. Her ears screamed with the pressure as she swam straight down to the car on the lake floor, about ten yards from the surface. The water was dark and the car partially covered by plant life. She saw nothing in the dark water until a hand suddenly floated by the side window. Sara opened her mouth to scream without thinking and almost choked on the water that forced its way into her mouth. She dove deeper to the door she’d seen Sam at, but it was barely open. She was running out of air. She had one chance, maybe ten more seconds before she’d be forced to surface, and by the time she returned, it would be too late.

  She pushed the car door open with her foot as she reached in, but the force of the water allowed her to get it open only enough to put her head an
d shoulders in to search for the girl. It was pitch black inside, and Sara could see nothing, not even her own hands reaching frantically out in front of her. At the last second, she pulled her arms out and felt the faintest brush of hair cross her fingertips. She dove for more of it, wrapping what she found around her fist and pulling the girl towards the door with it. She pried it open against the force of the water with all the strength she had left in her legs and managed to pull the girl’s head and shoulders out of the car before she realized she was close to passing out. She had just seconds left. Sara wrapped her arms under the girl’s arms and pushed the door open with everything she had. If she couldn’t break her loose from the steel frame this time, she knew she’d have to leave her. Then suddenly Sam was pulling on the other side of the door. She felt her own arms give way and her body start to sink as she blacked out.

  ****

  Sara woke to a feeling as if she was vomiting in her sleep. She felt heavy pressure on her chest, as if something was still holding her underwater, and her limbs were too weak to move. She choked as a rush of water shot out of her throat, and she felt someone turn her to the side. Splintered wood from the dock scraped her cheek as she fought for breath, water still spurting out of her mouth and nose.

  “Breathe, baby.”

  It was Sam’s voice. Sara struggled to open her eyes as she fought for air.

  “Don’t move, Sara,” Sam said, “Stay on your side until your airway clears, okay?”

  Air rushed into her lungs, sharp as shattered glass, and Sara felt strength slowly returning to her arms and legs. She realized suddenly she was surrounded by EMTs speaking in soft voices, telling her to relax and breathe. She took a deep breath in and opened her eyes.

  “Did she make it?” Her throat felt raw and ragged, and the words came out like molten steel, burning her nose and mouth.

  Sam leaned over her, placing her hand between the splintered dock and Sara’s face.

  “We don’t know yet,” she said, looking over her shoulder at the emergency personnel behind her. “She hasn’t come around, but they’re still working on her.”