So Bea talked to cover over the feeling.
“What is this?” she asked the girl, who was staring at the map.
“What is what?”
“This bay, or whatever body of water we’re crossing.”
“It’s not a bay. It’s the Columbia River.”
“Awfully wide for a river.”
“Well, it’s the mouth of the river. It’s wider at the mouth. You know, if we weren’t in such a hurry, there’s a really pretty drive you can take along the Columbia River Gorge. It has these high waterfalls right at the road, and nice places to hike.”
“It says that on the map?”
“No. A kid I went to school with did a report on it once after his family’s vacation.”
“Maybe on the way back,” Bea said.
“Right,” Allie replied, folding up the map. “Everything on the way back. Here’s the thing about us driving over the Columbia River. By the time we get off this bridge we’ll have crossed the state line. We’ll be in Washington.”
“Good,” Bea said.
They drove in silence for a moment or two, and the panicky feeling of falling began to set in again.
“Here’s the thing for me about driving over this river,” Bea said. “I get scared. I get scared on long automotive bridges because it feels like there’s nothing underneath me.”
“Here’s what you do. You raise your eyes to the other end of the bridge. The way we’re going. And you just keep them lifted like that. You never take your eyes off the other end of the bridge.”
“Oh,” Bea said after trying it for a time. “That actually helps.”
“Don’t sound so surprised.”
“I had a thought about what we could do after Cape Flattery.” She paused, but the girl only left space for Bea to continue. “I thought we could wind our way back down, more slowly, and this time drive the coast from Pacific Palisades to Mexico. Then we can honestly say we’ve seen the whole West Coast of the United States. Maybe we could even pop into Canada on our way up and Mexico at the end.”
“We can’t go to Canada or Mexico.”
“Why can’t we?”
“We don’t have passports. I mean, I don’t have mine along. And I’m guessing you don’t have one at all.”
“You don’t need them for just Canada and Mexico.”
“Oh, yes you do.”
“Now this is a subject I happen to know something about,” Bea said forcefully, her gaze still glued to the far end of the bridge. “I grew up in Buffalo, New York. Just a short drive from the Peace Bridge into Ontario. And you do not need a passport to cross the border. My family took that drive more times than I could count.”
“I hate to be the one to tell you, Bea. But things change.”
“When did they change that?”
“After the whole September eleventh thing. It’s a Homeland Security–type change. You know, after we get off this bridge we should find a place to stop for the night. I think we’re only about six hours or so from where we’re going. And we’ll be right on the water. But then in the morning when we drive again, we’ll be inland a whole lot of the time. Probably it’ll be hotter.”
Their drive across the bridge ended. Finally, blessedly ended. Bea let out a huge breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding.
“That’s really a shame,” she said.
“Stopping to sleep is not a bad thing, Bea.”
“I meant the way terrorism changes everything. It wasn’t that way when I was younger. The world was a safer place.”
“When you were younger there was World War Two!” Allie exclaimed.
“Oh,” Bea said. “True. I guess that is a point.”
“Maybe a place with a shower? I could use a shower again. It’s been two days since Casper’s house.”
“I could go for that myself,” Bea said.
“Bea,” Allie whispered in the darkened van. “Hey, Bea. Are you asleep?”
“I was. Almost. Now not so much.”
Bea opened her eyes, but they had not adjusted to the lack of light. So the effect was more or less the same. She had showered and changed into clean pajamas before bed. The comfort was something that actually broke through enough for Bea to feel, despite the fact that she was not consciously thinking about it.
The little campground near Willapa Bay was surprisingly free of artificial lights, which Bea felt might be a good thing. She wondered if she should stick her head out and look at the stars.
“Sorry,” the girl said after a time.
“Might as well say what you have on your mind.”
“That money I got for the gold. And the coins. He gave it to me in an envelope. I had it in my pocket at first, but I just want you to know I put it in the glove compartment. Way at the bottom, just in case somebody steals the van or breaks into it.”
“Wouldn’t it be safer with you?”
“I was just thinking . . .”
But for a strange length of time Allie didn’t say what she was thinking.
“Finish,” Bea said, perhaps too abruptly.
“I was thinking that if we got separated, I’d want you to have it. You know. For gas and food and all. And so you’ll be all right.”
The words made Bea’s face feel tingly and red.
“Why would we get separated?”
“If the police picked me up and dragged me back to L.A. That sort of thing.”
“That won’t happen now. We’re almost to Cape Flattery.”
But even as she said it, Bea knew that made no difference. They would always be somewhere. They had to be somewhere. And the police could always be in the same place.
“Well, whenever it happens. If it does. I just want you to know where that money is. I wrote my full name and my date of birth on the envelope. You know.”
“Not really,” Bea said. “I don’t think I do know.”
“If we got separated . . . you don’t even know my whole name. I just wanted to make sure you could . . . un-separate us again. You know. If you wanted to.”
“Oh,” Bea said. “Thank you.”
She felt she should say more, but her thoughts would not seem to untangle. And, suddenly, sleep was no longer in the picture.
Bea stepped out of the van in her pajamas and bare feet and looked up at the riot of stars for a few minutes. Inside herself, without words, Bea was fighting back against a strong, uneasy feeling that their adventure was about to come to a crashing end.
Bea figured she had been driving in the dark for at least an hour, maybe more like two. The girl shifted and seemed, from the sound of it, to be waking up.
Bea heard a muffled sentence, but couldn’t make out Allie’s sleepy words.
“What did you say?” Bea asked over her shoulder.
A minute later the girl flopped into the passenger seat, wrapped in a blanket. Her hair fell over her face, a disheveled mess. Bea could see her blinking too much by the soft light of the dashboard instruments.
“I said, ‘Why are we moving?’”
“I couldn’t sleep. So I figured I’d drive.”
“What time is it?”
“No idea. It’s too dark to see my watch.”
“What time was it when you started driving?”
“About three.”
They drove in silence for a time, the only sounds the familiar hum of the engine and the occasional whoosh of another car going by headed south.
“So . . . ,” Allie began, “not to criticize or anything . . . but it sort of seems like this hurry thing of yours is getting to be . . . maybe a little bit . . . obsessive?”
Bea paused, feeling she had to shape her thoughts before presenting them.
“I keep having this feeling,” Bea said after a time, “that something will happen. Something . . .” She knew there was more to say, but she never said it.
“That’s just a leftover feeling from Fort Bragg.”
“Maybe,” Bea said, though she didn’t think so.
“But it doesn’t feel
that way.” It wasn’t a question.
“No.”
Allie sat back and looked out the window.
“Any idea where we are?” the girl asked after a time. “Oh, wait. Never mind. There’s the turnoff for Lake Quinault. I know where that is from the map. You know it’s rain forest around here?”
“I thought rain forests were only in places like South America.”
“Most of them, I guess. But there’s still some in Olympic National Forest. Which is more or less where we are.”
“How do you know all this?” Bea asked, her voice a high whine of emotion she had not seen coming. “Everywhere we go, you seem to know something about the place. You’re like an encyclopedia with legs and a mouth.”
“So I paid attention in school. I had no idea that was a bad thing.”
“It isn’t,” Bea said with a sigh. “It’s very good. And I’m glad to know the things you tell me. I guess it just makes me feel like I know nothing.”
A mile or two of silence.
“You can go back to sleep,” Bea said. “I promise to drive carefully while you’re not in your seat belt.”
Allie scratched her nose. Then she rose without comment and disappeared into the back of the van.
A few moments later Bea heard the girl’s voice drift back up.
“You have these feelings a lot?”
“The inadequacy thing, you mean?”
“No, I mean that something bad is going to happen.”
“If you mean, do I worry a lot, yes. I always have. But an actual sense that I can feel something coming? Not once before in my life,” Bea said. “It’s actually quite unlike me.”
She waited for an answer from the girl, but none ever came.
They were driving along the water at Neah Bay—a place Herbert would have called “spitting distance” from their Cape Flattery destination—when Allie called for her to stop the van. Bea pulled over as best she could, but she had to drive a little farther to find any place to get off the road.
“Back up!” Allie shouted. It sounded happy, not alarmed or alarming. “Back up, Bea!”
“I can’t back up. There’s no place to park back there.”
“Fine. We’ll walk back.”
“To what?”
“Come on. You need to see this.”
They stepped out into the cool, damp morning. Into this little town on the Makah Reservation. Just at the very edge of Neah Bay, a shallow inlet along the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Bea blinked, feeling the world had changed overnight. This was nothing like the coast they had been driving all these days. This was new.
She followed the girl until they stood under a tree just a few dozen yards from the beach. Allie was looking up, so Bea looked up, too.
“What are we looking at?”
“Ever seen three bald eagles in a tree?”
“I’ve never seen one bald eagle in a tree. I’ve never seen a bald eagle. They don’t have those in the Coachella Valley.”
“Well, you’ve seen three now,” Allie said.
Bea followed the girl’s pointing hand.
Halfway up the tree, spaced a few feet apart, perched three enormous birds. Identical, like triplets. Dark brown feathers. Brilliant white heads. Light-colored eyes, staring down at Bea with stern concentration. They looked almost angry. Forceful. Their beaks and talons formed a sharp color contrast of yellow.
“Wish I had a camera,” Allie said.
“Yes, that might have been a nice thing to take on our adventure, but we didn’t think of it.”
“I have my iPhone. But it’s silly to take photos on it when I’m just about to pawn it.”
Bea felt her eyes go wide.
“Those telephone-computer things are also cameras?”
The girl only sighed and shook her head. They began the walk back to the van together.
“We have to stop and get a permit,” Allie said.
“What kind of permit?”
“This is Makah Indian land. They get to charge us to be on it if they like. You need to buy a recreation permit to park here and see the sights.”
Bea stopped walking abruptly. It took Allie a minute to notice.
“See, there you go again. How do you know all this? Don’t tell me they taught you that in school.”
“No, it was on the sign. There was a sign about it when we drove onto the reservation.”
“Oh,” Bea said, and began to shuffle along again. “I guess I wasn’t paying good enough attention.”
“Here’s the thing,” Allie said, jumping back into the van. “I got the permit. And it wasn’t expensive. Only ten dollars. But the boardwalk trail to the cape is three-quarters of a mile.”
“Round-trip?”
“No. Each way. A mile and a half round-trip.”
Bea felt something sag and nearly collapse inside her.
“Oh dear. I was afraid of this. I can’t even remember the last time I walked a mile and a half.”
They sat in silence for a moment. Not driving on. Not doing anything.
“So what are you going to do?” Allie asked.
“What can I do? I’m going to walk it.”
Bea could feel a ball of tension slip out of both of them and fade.
“Good for you, Bea.”
“I’ll be damned if I’m going to come all this way and let three-quarters of a mile stymie me.”
“I don’t know what ‘stymie’ means.”
“Good. Finally. Something I know and you don’t.”
They walked together on the path that led to the cape. Through evergreen forest, sunlight dappling the path here and there. Over the damp, often tilted, rough-cut wood that formed their boardwalk. It wasn’t milled lumber. It was more natural than all that. Bea could feel the humidity in the air, and hear the distant sounds of ocean waves on rock.
“I need to stop and rest a moment,” she said.
There was no place to sit, so Bea leaned on her own thighs and puffed. A moment later the girl moved closer to Bea’s side and encouraged Bea, without words, to lean on her.
Bea did.
“I’ve been thinking,” Allie said. “Now that we have this big adventure behind us . . . I think I need to figure out a way to get in touch with my parents in jail and let them know I’m okay.”
“Oh,” Bea said. “I hadn’t thought about that.”
“I’ve thought about it enough for both of us. The first few days I was just so mad at them. It’s like I figured it served them right. But it’s been so long now. They must be getting pretty panicky. I’m not sure I want to punish them that much.”
“So you figure they know you ran away?”
“Well . . . yeah. They must. I mean, their kid gets turned over to the county. I should think the county has to let them know if they . . . you know. Lose her.”
They began to walk again. Slowly. The morning was getting warmer, which didn’t help Bea’s energy level one bit.
“Do you have any idea how to contact them?”
“None,” Allie said. “If I knew how to call them, I would have done it days ago.”
“You think we’ve oversold this to ourselves?”
Bea knew it was a sharp conversational turn. But she had no idea how to help with the problem of the girl’s parents.
“The cape, you mean?”
“Yes. That.”
“I think we’ll find out in about a quarter of a mile,” Allie said.
By the time they arrived at a viewing platform at the very northwest tip of the country, Bea was finding it hard to keep her head lifted. It felt easier somehow to bend over herself, as if sheltering her straining lungs.
“There’s a bench,” she heard Allie say.
Bea stopped, pulled in a few ragged breaths, and looked up.
In front of her, under the shade of several trees, lay a rustic wooden deck with small tree trunk poles forming a railing. More poles rose to meet it vertically, so no little children could fall through. And yes, there was a plank
bench. Beyond that, Bea could see the jagged edges of more cape on the other side of a small cove. Inside the cove Bea could make out sea stacks—huge boulders extending up from the water, big enough to be their own tiny, very tall islands. Trees even grew on top of them.
“There are steps up involved,” Bea said, still breathy. “Only a couple, but still.”
“But I think it will be worth it,” Allie said. “Come on. I’ll pull.”
A moment later Bea stood with her feet on the plank decking and her hands on the round rail. She looked down to see caves worn into the sheer stone cliffs topped with dense evergreen, the water frothing white at the edges of jagged maps of rock. She could hear echoing roars as waves rolled into the caves and met the end of their travels. Bea could relate to reaching the end of one’s travels.
“I’ve never seen a piece of coast that was so . . . complex,” Bea said.
“You mean like the way it’s all ragged?”
“Yes. Like that. It’s so intricate. Lacy, almost. I guess the ocean has carved all this over the years.”
They watched and listened in silence. The sun at the railing of the platform was making Bea too hot, but she didn’t want to go sit down. She wanted to keep looking off the corner of the world. Her world, anyway.
“So . . . ,” Allie began. “Did we oversell it?”
“No,” Bea said firmly. “No, it would be impossible to oversell it. I think it’s the loveliest place I’ve ever seen. And I have you to thank for it, for keeping after an old fool until she finally broke down and tried something new.”
PART SIX
ALLIE
Chapter Thirty
Travel Advice from Ducks
“I want to stop at Ruby Beach,” Allie said.
There was a new sense of conviction in her tone. A sureness. Finally she was stepping up to take better charge of this adventure.
They were driving south on the 101, inland by default, and Ruby Beach would mark the spot where they arrived on the Washington coast again at long last.
“And you really can’t say no,” Allie added, “because all the way up I asked you to stop a million places, and you always said, ‘On the way back. On the way back. On the way back.’ And now we’re on the way back.”
Allie and Bea : A Novel Page 26