Allie and Bea : A Novel

by Catherine Ryan Hyde

  Hat man only gestured in her direction with his hat.

  “Thank you,” Bea said.

  She lifted the cold beer bottle by its neck and scooped the money out of the hat with her other hand. Then, much to her humiliation, tears rose in her eyes and spilled over for all to see. But no one stared, or said anything about her overreaction. Hat man just put his panama back on his bald head and sat down behind his mug again.

  Bea pulled one more long sip of her beer and left the rest in the bottle. She slipped off her bar stool and hurried toward the door, carrying the money and the second bottle of beer.

  “You all . . . ,” she said. Then she stalled. She knew what she was thinking, but not quite how to say it, or even if she could. If she was brave enough for such a thing. “You just changed the whole way I think about strangers,” she said.

  Then she hurried out.

  When she arrived back at the van, Allie was nowhere to be found.

  Impatient, she decided to drive around and look for the girl.

  Allie did not prove to be hard to find. Bea quickly spotted her around the corner.

  Bea honked the horn and the girl jogged over and hopped in.

  Bea accelerated and headed for the beach.

  “I asked somebody,” Allie said, “and they said you get to the ocean by taking this road. It’s more than four miles, though. I thought I’d just walk a ways to someplace where I could see it. But it was a lot of ups and downs.”

  “Those are the worst,” Bea said.

  The girl reached out and fingered the sweaty neck of the cold, sealed beer, which Bea had set in the cup holder.

  “So you took your drink to go.”

  “Something like that. Yeah.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “The ocean.”

  “Oh. Good. I didn’t think you’d want to do that. I thought you’d think it was a waste of gas.”

  “I’m changing my mind about what’s wasteful and what’s not,” Bea said. “Seems all my life I had to make choices between what I considered wasting money and what I now see was wasting my life. If it keeps you from wasting your life, it can’t very well be a waste, now can it?”

  “Wow. You always make so much progress when I’m not around. I should go away more often.”

  Just past a beach parking lot with a backdrop of powerful waves crashing on the sand, Bea stopped at the gate of the RV park.

  “I think you have to pay to go in there,” Allie said.

  “Yes, you do. Here.” Bea handed her the money she had scooped out of a stranger’s panama hat. It had been sitting in the other cup holder. “Tell them we want to be by the seawall.”

  “I’m missing something,” Allie said, staring at the money but not taking it. “How do you know they have a seawall?”

  “Some locals at the tavern told me.”

  “They must have made it sound great. Two nights in a row you agree to shell out for expensive campgrounds?”

  “It sounded appealing, yes.” While she waited, watching Allie look at the money but not take it, Bea berated herself for cowardice. And for being a liar, at least by omission. All Bea’s life she had been lying by omission, she now realized. When you omit nearly everything you could be telling people, there isn’t much truth left to go around. “Actually, there was more to it than that. I told them we couldn’t afford it, and they took up a collection so we could come down here.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yes, it was very nice of them.”

  “I meant wow, you told them we couldn’t afford it. But yeah. That was really nice. See? I told you most people are good.”

  “I could have done without the ‘I told you so.’”

  “Right. Sorry. The minute it came out of my mouth I knew it was wrong.”

  Between the dunes and the seawall, along a road of deeply rutted dirt, they drove past a row of trailers. It took Bea a moment to realize their occupants were not overnighters. These trailers were permanent. And probably what the man at the bar had been referring to when he used the word “funky.”

  The trailers themselves were tiny and ancient, huddled close together, even older than the one Bea had left behind. Most had fences hand built around them, often out of driftwood. Fishing nets and floats decorated the yards, along with a carved ship’s masthead and even a full-size anchor. Imaginative, these residents were. Rich, they were not.

  “Why aren’t you driving?” Allie asked.

  It startled Bea, who had been lost in thought and hadn’t realized she had stopped.

  “I was just looking at these trailers. I was just wondering . . . maybe I could afford to live in a place like this.”

  “But don’t those trailers have refrigerators and little bathrooms?”

  “Oh. Right. Of course. I forgot about that.”

  “And it might be expensive to stay here, even though it’s not too fancy. Because it’s right by the ocean. And everybody wants to be right by the ocean.”

  “True.”

  “And it might get cold in the winter.”

  “Okay, I’ve got it. You talked me out of it.”

  “I wasn’t trying to talk you out of it. Just wanted you to think about those things.”

  “No. You’re right. It was just a thought.”

  But it was a thought Bea hated to see fly away.

  Bea pushed her easy chair closer to the back doors of the van, which stood wide open, providing a view over the seawall and Tomales Bay. She saw hills in the distance behind the water, a little fishing pier that seemed to be part of their campground, and the sun going down in a surprising location, reminding Bea that she had no idea which direction was which. But it didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was the way the late sun sparkled on the water.

  “Aren’t you afraid of letting Phyllis out?” Allie asked.

  The girl was tying on her shoes again.

  “Those first few days I was. I thought she might try to escape and run home. But I think she’s used to the van now. I think she’ll hunker down in here to feel safe. Anyway, I’m watching her.”

  “Come out for a walk with me. Just down onto the sand. We won’t go far.”

  “Where do you see sand?”

  “Right at the end of the seawall there’s a place where you can get down onto the beach.”

  “Tell me all about it when you get back.”

  Allie sighed. Then she vaulted from the back of the van, over the low seawall, and onto wet sand on the other side. Phyllis spooked and ran under the passenger seat.

  Bea sighed contentedly, breathing in the sea air. Drinking in the scene. Drinking her second beer while it was still cold.

  What seemed like only a minute or two later, Allie was back, sticking her head in through the open doors.

  “You have to see this.”

  “I’m too comfortable.”

  “No, really. I mean it. You have to see it.”

  Bea sighed, not so contentedly this time.

  “All right, all right. But I hope it isn’t very far.”

  “It’s not. You can practically see the spot from here.”

  Bea set her beer down on the van floor and carefully stepped out, closing and locking the back doors behind her. She shuffled along beside the low wall, following the girl.

  This had better be good, she was thinking. But she did not say so out loud.

  “For one thing, I wanted you to see him,” Allie said, pointing to a pelican. He was hunkered down in the parking lot, his neck entirely withdrawn into himself, his comically long, clumsy beak angled off his feathered chest and into the air. Bea could see every detail of his brown feathers. He was only a handful of feet away, and apparently not inclined to move away from them. Not in the least concerned about their presence.

  “But it gets better,” Allie added.

  “I thought pelicans were white.”

  “Some are. But here on the coast we have Pacific browns. They’re pretty common.”

  “How do you
know all that?”

  “I grew up near the beach.”

  “Oh. That’s right. You did, didn’t you?”

  “Also I went to school. You know. Just because I’m young doesn’t mean I don’t know anything.”

  They moved through a gap in a fence at the end of the seawall. Bea reached out for Allie’s arm to steady herself as they made their way down a short but steep hill of sand. Then they were walking on sand at the edge of the lightly lapping bay. Bea turned her head to look more closely at a tall dune on the land side, marked with perfect patterns—troughs and waves—that the wind had blown into its surface. In the setting sun it glowed orange.

  It was all very beautiful, but also tiring. It was hard walking in loose sand, and Bea felt she’d had enough.

  “I hope it’s not much farther,” she said, her voice marred by puffing breath.

  “It’s not. We’re here. Look.”

  The girl stood at the edge of the water and pointed down. Bea followed the pointing finger and saw that dozens of jellyfish had washed up onto the beach. They were orangey, and looked a little like huge uncooked eggs with multiple yolks. But at the same time they were far more intricate and beautiful.

  It formed a perfect loop in Bea’s mind. On one end was the aquarium in Monterey, where they had been able to see—albeit in a simulated way—under the ocean waters. On the other was driving the coast while truly understanding that all that wonder really did exist just beyond their view.

  She thought of the man with that hat and the bushy hair—wondered how he knew that this would be her perfect heaven. Or maybe he had been speaking more generically. Still, it felt prophetic now.

  She looked up to see Allie staring into her face.

  “You look happy,” the girl said.

  “I think I am.”

  “You think? You don’t know?”

  “It’s an unfamiliar sensation. Give me some slack.”

  “Right. Sorry. So you’re glad you walked down here, I hope.”

  “Yes,” Bea said. “I’m glad.”

  They stood for a long time in silence. Bea alternated between watching the sun set behind the fishing pier and looking down at the way its golden light made the colors of the jellyfish glow.

  “I think I had a false idea about heaven,” Bea said.

  “Heaven?”

  “Not heaven like where some people think you go after you die. More like heaven on earth. I always thought it would be a place where nothing was going on and nothing was required of you. You know, perfectly restful. But now I think it might be a more action-oriented sort of deal.” She paused to see if the girl had anything to add to the odd set of thoughts. “Well. We should go back before the sun goes down.”

  But for a good five or ten more minutes, Bea just stood and drank in that perfect moment.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Definitely Friendly, but Definitely Not a Ghost

  Driving through the heart of Fort Bragg, a nice enough small town on a high cliff over the sea, Bea spotted the familiar pattern of black and white on an approaching southbound car. She was only just absorbing the color of its light bar, and what it meant to their situation, when Allie began to shout.

  “Turn! Fast! Turn right here!”

  Bea swung the wheel wildly. The tires squealed. She could only hope she had sufficient distance from the police car, or Highway Patrol car, or whatever it was. She could only hope its driver hadn’t seen or heard that ridiculous turn.

  “Turn again! Pull in here!”

  “Stop barking orders at me! You’re making me nervous.”

  Still, Bea turned, as she had been told to do, and rolled to a stop out of sight of the main drag—the coast highway through town. They waited in absolute silence.

  Nothing happened. No police car drove down the side street looking for them.

  Bea sighed and shifted the van into “Park.” She rested her forehead on the steering wheel, breathing out as much of her alarm as she could manage.

  “Maybe I should just get this over with,” Allie said.

  “I don’t know what you’re referring to. Get what over with?”

  “You know.”

  “If I knew I wouldn’t be asking.”

  “Maybe I should just turn myself in.”

  Bea opened her mouth to speak, but her throat felt tightly locked, and she wasn’t sure if she would succeed. She reached out for the ignition key and turned off the engine. The silence felt stunning. The slight hum of cars on the highway formed a background to the moment, but all else held still.

  Bea swallowed hard in preparation for attempting to speak.

  “Please don’t do that,” she said to the girl.

  “I’m just so tired of being scared like this. Always looking over my shoulder. And maybe they’d go easier on me if I turned myself in. Besides. We both know I have to. Sooner or later. I can’t just ride around with you till I’m eighteen.”

  Bea’s brain did not seem to be in working order, so she couldn’t present cogent arguments in a crisp format as she might have wished. Instead she said, again, “Please don’t.” It sounded pathetic, like a puppy whimpering, begging for someone to make it feel more secure.

  “I’ll give you the gold bar before I go. If that’s what you’re worried about.”

  Bea shook her head. “It’s not.”

  “What, then?”

  “I don’t want to go back to the way it was before I had you along. It was terrible. I hated it. I was alone and I was scared all the time. And now we’re actually doing things that are . . . good. That make me feel good. And you don’t even know for a fact that your nosy neighbor reported my license plate number. For all you know she was too far away to see it or didn’t care enough to call. You might be making this huge decision for no reason at all. We haven’t seen Cape Flattery yet. We’re only halfway there, and you can’t quit halfway through an adventure. It’s just not right.”

  Bea waited. The silence stretched out. She didn’t dare look at the girl. It would be too much like looking into a mirror and seeing the most vulnerable side of herself in the worst possible light.

  “You never act like it’s a good thing that I’m along,” Allie said, her voice small. “You act like I’m a big pain in your ass.”

  “Well . . . you are, dear. But it was still much worse without you.”

  Another long silence.

  “Okay,” Allie said. “I guess we should try to get all the way up to Cape Flattery before I make any big decisions.”

  Bea straightened up and filled her lungs with air.

  “Yes. Excellent. Thank you. On to Cape Flattery.”

  She turned the key in the ignition. No sound. Well, one sound.

  Click.

  She turned the key to “Off” again. She sat a moment, feeling the chill settle into her belly and her bones. Then she decided it had been an anomaly, or she had somehow turned the key in not quite the right way. This next time would be different, and all would be well again.

  She cranked at the key a second time.

  Click. Click. Click.

  Not only did the engine not turn over, it didn’t even try. Judging by its response, for all Bea knew a pickpocket might have stolen it right out from under the hood while she was begging the girl not to go.

  Bea withdrew the key and set it in her lap.

  “Uh-oh,” she said.

  “Now what?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “I guess we call a tow,” Allie said.

  “With what? Do you still have that cell phone you took from your house?”

  “Yeah, but I don’t dare use it. You can track a person’s location with a cell phone.”

  “That can’t be true.”

  “Look. I’ll get out and walk to the nearest business and borrow their phone.”

  “What do you think a tow costs, though?”

  “No idea,” Allie said. “I never called one. I’m barely old enough to drive, remember?”

&nbs
p; She opened the door and stepped down out of the van. She stood on the sidewalk for a moment, digging into the pocket of her jeans. She pulled out what Bea thought she recognized as the one-ounce gold bar. To Bea’s surprise, the girl pressed her lips to it, right through its plastic bag.

  “Guess I can kiss this goodbye, though,” Allie said.

  Then she slammed the door and she was gone.

  “So, is someone coming?” Bea asked before the girl could even jump back into the passenger seat.

  “Yeah.”

  “How much is it going to cost?”

  “I still don’t know.”

  “You didn’t ask?”

  “I asked. Of course I asked. But it didn’t help. He said there was a ninety-five-dollar hookup fee. And then it’s five dollars a mile to tow it to a repair shop. After . . . I forgot. There are a few miles they throw in for free, but not many. I forgot the number. They’re a repair shop, the tow truck people. So they can tow it into their own place. So they know where they are. But I had to put the guy on the phone with the lady in the store so she could tell them where we are. I didn’t talk to him after that, so I have no idea how many miles it’ll be.”

  “Oh. Okay. Well . . . we’ll manage, I guess. You still have your computer. And the gold bar, and your phone, and . . . what did you call that other thing?”

  “My iPad?”

  “Yes. I have no idea what that is. But it’s worth money, right?”

  “Yeah, but we have another problem. There’s no pawnshop. The lady let me look in her phone book. There’s just a listing for a guy who buys gold and coins and stuff—”

  “That’s perfect. That’s exactly what we need.”

  “—in Eureka. Unless we want to go inland, which I think we don’t.”

  “Oh. How far away is Eureka?”

  “I don’t know in miles. But I could show you on the map.” Allie pulled the map from the glove compartment and opened out its folds. “Here’s us,” she said, pointing to Fort Bragg. Then she slid her finger up the coast. Way up the coast. “And here’s Eureka.”

  “Oh dear. Too far to walk, I’d say.”

  “Too far to walk in a week. And . . . Oh. That figures. Our tow is here.”

  “So fast?” Bea asked, her voice full of dread.