The Dead Enders

by Erin Saldin

  I stand in the boat, holding on to the edge of the windshield. I touch his back and yell into the wind, “You saved my life.”

  He shifts his weight toward me, touching my shoulder with his own. “Good.”

  I laugh. The breath catches in my throat, and suddenly I’m doubled over, coughing. My lungs are burning.

  “You okay?” His hand on my back.

  I stand. Take a few practice breaths. “I think I need to go to the doctor,” I yell. “After we get Erik.”

  He nods.

  There’s no one else on the water. I scan the lake for the telltale green light of the sheriff’s patrol boat, but even that’s been docked, I guess. The dark water crests and falls, crests and falls against itself, and we cut through it. Together, we watch as Washer’s Landing becomes more distinct against the black sky. The flickering lights that we could see from the Den are larger now, small bonfires at the top. I can’t hear it yet, but I know there’s music.

  I turn to look at the Den. From here, it’s a bright orange glow against the black sheet of water and sky and trees. Have they seen it yet? Do they know what they’re looking at?

  Touching Davis’s arm again (it’s all I want to do), I yell, “What are we going to do? About Erik?”

  “I don’t know,” he yells back, the wind swallowing the ends of his words. Then he adds, “He did the Nelsons’, too.”

  “What?”

  “He’s done all the fires.” Davis looks pained. “Starting with the chapel, I think.”

  “We all started the chapel,” I say, but Davis shakes his head.

  “I’m not so sure. Because when you went back in there, he was yelling—and I didn’t remember what he was saying until today.”

  I wait, the wind cutting across the bow of the boat. Washer’s Landing is getting closer now.

  “Sorry,” says Davis. “He was yelling that he was sorry, so sorry. He thought he’d killed you then. And now . . .” He leans forward, pushes the throttle up even higher. The boat jumps across one wave, smacks the water, hard. “We’ve got to get there,” says Davis. “He has to see that you’re all right.”

  I’m watching Washer’s Landing. We’re almost there now. The cliffs are obsidian walls. It looks like a fortress. And then—

  “Davis,” I say, grabbing his arm. “What was that?”

  GEORGIE

  Henry’s long gone. And I don’t mean that he’s gone gone, scared off by my rejection. I mean that he’s gone in the way that all Weekenders like him are gone at the last party of the year. I catch glimpses of him over by the keg, eyes glassy, Gumby arms. Geeked out. Gone. Once, when I glance over, he’s hitting on Kelly. I watch him lean over to whisper at her face, and I can see her step back and move away.

  Gone.

  It’s getting colder, and people look annoyed. They hug their arms, drink more, give me money for just a little something extra, even if that’s not what they planned to do tonight. I’m probably going to walk away with four fifty, and it’s all bullshit, all of it. I’d tell someone if I had someone to tell. But the others aren’t here. And I can’t tell if the bad feeling I have is because of that or something else.

  I’m just finishing up a deal when I see him.

  Erik’s standing in the middle of the cabin’s foundation, his arms at his sides. People step around him almost like they don’t see him. He’s not moving. And when he spots me, his face crumples, just for a second—the face of a broken boy. He reaches his arms in my direction and takes one, two, three steps toward me.

  When we’re finally face-to-face, I can see that he’s been crying. There’s a dark black smudge by his hairline. He smells like a campfire. His hands are shaking.

  “Erik,” I say. “What did you do?”

  Someone’s put Neil Young on—one last shout-out to their summer, I guess—and the speakers crackle as he sings, “Out of the blue, and into the black. They give you this, but you pay for that.”

  “What did you do?” I ask again, but he doesn’t answer. The party roars around us like an ocean, and I focus on his face. There’s moss in his hair. Dirt on his cheeks. And that black smudge. “Where were you?”

  “I’ll show you,” he says, and starts walking away from the party, toward the cliffs.

  Erik weaves through the trees, carving a steady diagonal. I step over rocks, fallen logs, trying to keep up. We can still hear the party—we’re not that far away—but it’s just static.

  Finally, he stops.

  We’re at the highest cliff. The one that no one jumps from, not only because the rocks below it jut out too far from this angle, but because it’s sixty feet to the water. The ledge here is wider, probably ten feet total, and there are small rocks and pebbles scattered around. In the middle of the ledge, looking out over the lake, is a small circle with some burnt logs and sticks, the makeshift campfire of some Weekenders looking for a place to screw and spend the night. The trees on either side of the ledge are dark soldiers, hemming us in. The sky is black now, the stars obscured by heavy clouds. I smell rain.

  “Let’s go back,” I say. “Erik? Let’s go back to the party.”

  He smiles at me. “Nah,” he says. “You can go. I’ll stay.”

  That’s when I see the fire.

  At first, it looks like one of the larger cabins on the lake has all its lights on. Floodlights, the works. I shield my eyes with one hand and squint. That’s not what it is. The lights move. They flicker. And they’re orange—red, even. As I watch, the redness kind of gels together, fuzzing at the edges. Taking over.

  “Holy shit,” I say. “Erik. Look.” My hand is in my pocket, closing around my phone. I pull it out, start punching numbers. “I’m calling 911.”

  “Don’t.” His voice is quiet, and my head snaps up. Erik has a tear running down each cheek, but he’s smiling. “Please don’t,” he says.

  I drop my phone on the ground. “Oh shit, Erik.” The look on his face tells me everything. I watch the fire burn across the lake. I can almost hear the pop as windows shatter. The red glow gets steadily stronger, and from behind us, at the party, I hear a few screams, some shouting. “We have to—” I start to say, but he interrupts me.

  “Gold Fork.”

  “What?” I’m staring at his heels, which are scuffing backward. Little shuffle dance.

  “Worst Case Scenario. I don’t even get Bismarck, right? Omaha is out.” He shrugs. “It’s just fucking Gold Fork.”

  “Not true.” My voice is high and nervous, and I try again. I keep my eyes focused on his. “Not true, Erik. You always have a choice. You can always go.”

  “You can. Davis can. Ana—” He stops. “You can all go. Not me.” He glances behind him, and I don’t know if he’s looking at the cliff or the inferno beyond. “Better to burn out, George.” He swallows, and I can see, for a second, that his chin is trembling. He looks like a little boy, and I want so badly for him to come to me, to run away from all these demons.

  “It’s okay,” I say, and step forward.

  “No,” he says.

  ERIK

  “No,” I say, and she stops coming toward me.

  I shift my gaze out over the water, to where the Michaelson estate is lit up like a torch. I think I can make out the distant sound of sirens screaming through town. “I want to watch my show,” I say.

  She follows my gaze. “Is that—” Her voice catches in her throat. Georgie leans forward. “The Den?”

  I nod. “Was.”

  Another gasping breath. “You didn’t.” But she doesn’t say anything else.

  “Sure I did. Don’t you know?” I point out at the flames, sparks popping in the sky. “It’s Independence Day.”

  “Erik.” Georgie’s crying. “What did you do?”

  “I fixed it.” I have to fight the sudden burst of laughter that starts somewhere low in my gut. I swallow. “It’s okay now.”

  It’s okay it’s okay it’s okay it’s okay.

  Davis running toward the cabin.


  Ana.

  Davis running toward the cabin.

  Ana.

  It’s okay it’s okay it’s okay it’s okay.

  Georgie points across the water. Red and blue lights flash around the burning cabin. Her voice, when she talks, is high and frantic. “Oh shit. Oh shit. You didn’t— Wait. Did you do the Nelsons’, too?” She looks at me, and I nod. “But why did you—” Georgie leans over, dry heaving. Her arms kind of sway next to her. “Oh God. This is so fucked.”

  Rain starts to fall—fat drops that splash against the ledge and seem to bounce in the air.

  She doesn’t know that Ana’s in there. Maybe the others, too. She doesn’t know, and I don’t want her to. Not yet. She can hear about it later. Right now, I just want her to understand me.

  “Because he deserves to lose too.” I feel calm. Calmer than I’ve felt in months. “They all do. These people, they come in and take anything they want. And they promise us that if we just play our parts, we’ll get something in return. But they’re lying. They’re not going to give us a damn thing. They’ll just keep taking, and taking, and taking.” My cheeks are wet, and I swipe at them. Funny, I don’t feel sad. Just still and calm.

  “What are you talking about?” Georgie takes a deep breath.

  She’s looking just beyond me, and I turn and notice how close I am to the edge of the rocks. I shrug, walk away from the cliff a few paces, watch her relax a little. It’s raining harder now, and I have to raise my voice over the sound.

  “Where’s it gonna be, George? Where’s it gonna be? Nowhere. That’s where.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “This whole goddamn summer,” I say. “My whole goddamn life. Everything. You think they were going to let me out of here?”

  “You can still go. You don’t need a stupid scholarship.”

  “Never gonna happen. And that place—” I look back at the fire. “They might call it a private club, but we know what it would really be. A prison.”

  “Erik, you’re not making sense.” Georgie’s voice is quiet and even. “Erik, I think we need to get some help here.”

  So she doesn’t understand. Well, I shouldn’t expect her to. But I have to try to make her see what I see. I shake my head. Too late to think that way.

  “Not a prison for them,” I tell her. “For the rest of us. Most people can’t get in. But if you are in, like my mom, like me—you can’t get out. Just cleaning up their crumbs and their piss for the rest of your life. And even then they’ll think they’re doing you a favor.”

  “That’s not how it has to be,” she says. “Erik, listen, your dad’s a dick. So what? Let’s just take a minute. Okay?”

  Her voice is still so even, and I glance behind me, notice that the edge of the cliff is close. Again I step toward her.

  “We have to forget all of this,” Georgie says. Her voice catches, but she keeps going. “No one has to know about . . . the fires.”

  “They’ll figure it out,” I say. I look toward the fire and see the boat coming across the water. Even though it’s dark, I can see Davis’s outline. And next to him, a figure. Ana.

  Thank God. Oh, thank God.

  And I laugh a little, before my voice breaks and the sob comes out. “This isn’t like the Nelsons’. There’s more, Georgie.”

  “Erik,” Georgie says. “It’s okay. Listen to me. We can explain this.”

  “We can’t.” For a second, the weight of it all threatens to pin me down. “You don’t understand. There’s no way out of this.”

  “Let’s talk. Let’s get help. I can help you.”

  But everything’s starting to sound muted, like I’m listening from far away, and I just smile at her. “I know,” I say. “I know.”

  And I do know. I know what’s waiting for me at home, her anxious hands folded, always folded, around some mug of tea as she sits at the kitchen table, waiting. I know what’s waiting for me next year, and the year after that, and the year after that. The same kitchen. The same table. The same hands. The same me.

  “I wanted someone to take me with them,” I say. “Anyone. But especially you.”

  She flinches, remembering the party at Fellman’s, how I asked. I don’t want her to remember how she laughed—she doesn’t need this, it’s not fair to her—but I watch her squeeze her eyes shut and then open them again. “You wanted me.” I can’t see her face too clearly in the rain, but something passes over it—something beautiful and sorrowful and too too late. “Come with me, Erik,” she says. “Come with me. Wherever I go, you go.”

  And the thing is, it feels just like I thought it would. The words hit me in the gut, a warm, safe, finally feeling that moves up my neck, over my face. Like arms around my waist. Like a hand on my cheek. Finally. Finally.

  “Thank you,” I say. I step closer to Georgie and I smile through my tears, through the rain. I’m trying to tell her everything.

  Because then I spin around and I’m running, faster than I’ve ever run before, my feet wheeling under me so that I don’t even feel it when they leave the ground and I’m in the air, the night so dark and perfect and I’m flying straight into it, arms out, nothing behind me because I know, without a doubt, that they’ll never catch me now.

  • • •

  We all get out, one way or another. To leave Gold Fork is to pack a bag that includes only what scares you. Nothing else will serve. Leave everything else behind.

  The people we’ll meet wherever we’re going won’t understand. In dorm rooms and barracks, at art galleries and gyms, we’ll tell them about Gold Fork and will hear the way we’ve turned it into a place as mythic and magical as Atlantis, hidden beneath the water. And they’ll listen to us and will say, “I don’t get it. Isn’t it just a town?” because they come from “just a town” themselves, and can only imagine their home as a place to return for obligatory holidays, not the thing they’ve lost forever.

  Because we have lost it. Even if we come back from time to time, drop our bags at the door and yell, “I’m home!” even if we stay for a whole summer between graduating from college and starting that internship in New York we never thought we’d get, Gold Fork is gone. It’s no longer the place we grew up, stretching our arms above our heads as though reaching through the sky to something different, something that we were sure would be better than the endless cycle of waiting for Weekenders and enduring the rest. We lost Gold Fork the minute we left.

  Of course, most of us won’t leave. Most of us will stay, our feet seemingly encased in the drying cement of the new sidewalk along Fourth and Main, or stuck in the thigh-high mud next to the fishing pond. Every day, as we walk to work at the diner or the post office, as we lug cleaning supplies or fresh linens from one Weekender’s home to another’s, we’ll feel the cement drying, the mud cracking around our knees, and we’ll feel the impossibility of escape. But we’ll be wrong. Eventually, everyone leaves. Perhaps: Old and wrinkled, our heads on thin pillows, we’ll take our last breath of Gold Fork’s piney air. Perhaps: Browsing through the books at the drugstore, we’ll feel our heart click and whir and, grabbing our chest just like in the movies, we will tumble in a slow-motion fall to the ground.

  Perhaps. Or perhaps the lake will claim us as it has always promised, and we will live beneath the water-skiers and paddleboarders, far beneath even the fish, our hair wrapped in algae and our hands clutching the pebbled sand of our only and true home.

  DAVIS

  Georgie is scrambling down the rocky path from the top of the cliff as we anchor the boat. It looks like she’s flying. She’s screaming, but I don’t need to hear her to know what she’s saying—we saw it too.

  And then we’re all in the water, diving down, popping back up, diving again. The rain is coming down hard, the waves so high that they splash our faces whenever we come up for air so that it feels like we’re drowning even as we rise.

  We have to pull Georgie out.

  And then clawing our way back up to the party, the three of us runni
ng, slipping, falling in the gravel, screaming at the Weekenders to call, fucking call someone. Waving down the first truck we see on the road (finally, finally) and screaming for the cops. For anybody. And the driver, a logger just down from a clear-cutting operation on the mountain, making the call on his CB radio and running back down to the water with us and tossing off his boots and flannel and jumping in himself, yelling for us to wait there, wait there.

  Ana’s lips: a blue line across her face.

  My hands: an old woman’s tremor.

  Georgie: crawling to the edge of the rocks, cupping her hands around her mouth, and screaming Erik’s name. She jumps in again before we can stop her.

  It’s the logger, finally, who grabs her under the armpits and swims her back to shore. “Fucking crazy!” he’s shouting at her, and then he glares at Ana and me before turning and diving back into the water. We can barely hear him over the rain and the thunder. “You want to lose two of your friends tonight?”

  Before she can try again, I throw my arms around Georgie. She fights and shakes, cursing me, cursing Erik. It takes me a while to realize that the shaking is involuntary. It racks her whole body so that it feels like I’m trying to hold on to a jackhammer. “She’s too cold!” I yell at Ana over the thunder that cracks above our heads. “In shock or something!”

  She looks at Georgie, looks at me. Takes off her shirt.

  I blink.

  “Davis.”

  She’s beautiful.

  “Dammit, Davis.” She jerks her finger at me. “You too.”

  And then I understand what she wants us to do, and I take off my shirt as Ana takes off Georgie’s, and the two of us wrap ourselves around her and hold on. My arms reach around Georgie to grab Ana’s shoulders. Her hands meet my ribs. And we stay like that, sandwiching Georgie between us, looking at each other and rocking back and forth, until the ambulance arrives far above with the first lightning strike.

  GEORGIE

  There is nobody in the water. Correction: no body. That’s all they could say, after a six-day search. Divers, a scope. Early on, a net dragged carefully through the water in front of Washer’s Landing, though the net went down only sixty feet and we all know that no one’s been to the very bottom. Or, if anyone has, they haven’t risen back up to talk about it.