Instead, I relaxed my body into Bobby’s arms as best I was able, dog-tired from all the preparations and the last minute shuttin’ up of the ranch. I caught sight of myself in the rearview mirror. The strain of the past six months had caught itself up, etched into a deep crevice of fresh lines across my forehead and smaller, spindly ones around my eyes. My cheeks were sunken and my skin lacked the color that Bobby used to say gave me the sorta “country girl complexion” he had a weakness for. I discreetly pinched at the skin above my cheekbones but it made little difference.
“Rest up a little, Bridget,” Maggie said, turnin’ to me a second time. “We’re in this together now,” she said, softenin’ her tone, reachin’ out and squeezin’ my hand in hers. She, for one, appeared the picture of health despite her worries and woes. Flushed, with the first throws of infatuation, I guess.
We drove past a cluster of giant volcanic rocks, those familiar, monolithic boulders that mark so much of the land out here. These hulkin’ lumps, nature’s monuments to the past, are scattered in random spots across western Sonoma and Marin counties. Tidal patterns and waves shaped these strange, stone sentinels back in a time when sea levels were said to be so high they sat below sea level.
“What was it the old folk used to tell us about these rocks, Maggie?” I asked. “Somethin’ about the wooly mammoths, long extinct, rubbin’ the rock surface smooth with centuries of groomin’?”
“Ha,” Maggie answered. “I do remember. Scientists dubbed this stretch of the coastline the Sonoma Serengeti, if I remember right, seeing as it once rivaled the African plains for wildlife?”
Bobby hacked his nasty, chesty cough into the fold of his shirtsleeve. I was well aware he was havin’ issues from the heavy tobacco smokin’ he did when he was not around me and yet I kept my concerns to myself. One of us sick was enough. He piped in with his take on what he termed as his local knowledge of natural phenomena: “And to think, it was commonplace for packs of saber-toothed tigers to hide out behind these stones,” he said. “Wild.”
“What was it made all of that wonderful ancient wildlife vanish?” I asked.
“Climate, I guess,” Bobby piped in.
Maggie and Mia — hadn’t they upped and gone and vanished on me, the minute they’d each turned eighteen? Maybe it was the climate that drove them away, also, the prospect of more miserable winter months. I rubbed the steamy glass with the back of my hand and watched the waves crash onto shore. The Pacific Ocean is as perilous as it is breathtakin’. You’d better believe it.
Those unfamiliar with the sleeper waves, the riptides and the sheer, relentless power of those deep, dark, swirlin’ currents beneath, have so little idea how truly dangerous it is to dawdle on the rocks, which reminded me, we were coming up to the same craggy point where Mia and me once witnessed a dramatic helicopter rescue back when she was in junior high.
We’d taken a spontaneous mother-daughter afternoon road trip up the coast, one of those rare, balmy evenin’s in summer when I was not needed at the roadhouse. It was a rare event for me to pack a picnic for the two of us and we’d set up on the rocky bluff at the top of Bodega Head in time to watch the sunset from our foldout chairs. While we were happily munchin’ on our supper of egg salad sandwiches with a pickle apiece, a teenage boy wearin’ nothin’ but a baseball cap and swim shorts hauled himself over the top of the cliff edge some 20 feet ahead.
We could see straight off that the scrawny kid, not a lot older than Mia, was close to hyperventilatin’, havin’ clearly been in one heck of a precarious position on the other side of the cliff. Thank the Lord the cliff was not more sheer, or there was no way he would have made it to the top. Still, there was little substantial ledge to grab a hold of. It struck me that nobody in half a right mind would make an attempt at such a climb. Unless it was his only option.
He gestured wildly when he set eyes on us, unable to spit his words out, sheer panic written all over his face. I had no instinct to be a hero or nothin’, though I carefully approached the cliff edge to take a look for myself as to what was goin’ on down there in the surgin’ ocean.
Sure enough, two more boys about the same age and size were clingin’ to the cliff, one of them about 15 feet down, the other, closer to 50. I clapped a hand to my mouth. Below them, the frigid Pacific surf crashed against a series of smaller rocks.
“Call nine one one,” the kid who’d made it to the top screamed and hollered as he caught his breath. “We need help, oh God, they might not make it up.”
I pulled my phone from my backpack and dialed with shaky fingers, a mixture of massive relief and surprise runnin’ through my veins the second the call went through. The sheriff’s department’s helicopter, Henry 1 hovered overhead in what felt like time suspended. The Coast Guard, state park rangers, Bodega Bay Fire Department, the whole nine yards of emergency services appeared in what felt like seconds to assist the helicopter crew.
Dozens of volunteers pulled into the cliff edge parkin’ lot in a dusty caravan of cars, trucks and motorcycles. The first boy, who we had hastily cocooned in our picnic blanket to calm him from his uncontrollable shiverin’ rallied and called down to his friends as they clung on for dear life: “Don’t move. Hold on. Hold on,” he cried.
I was almost sure one or both of the boys was gonna make a wrong move. As it turned out, I read in the paper later, the three young bucks were celebratin’ the boy with the baseball cap’s passin’ his driver’s test when they made a series of foolish choices, not least takin’ a hike down a steep cliffside trail to the beach below to smoke a joint and nap. By the time they’d been rudely awoken by the risin’ tide, there was no trail no more. They were stranded. Between them, they’d figured their only chance was to climb. It was the driver who made it to the top, though who knows how the hell he did it. “I had to save us, somehow,” the kid was quoted in the article.
The crew of Henry 1 had made a swift assessment of the situation by flyin’ in a deputy officer on one of those long-line rescue apparatus. We’d watched, openmouthed, silent, as darkness fell, us and the whole big crowd that had assembled, as the deputy secured the teen who was closer to the top of the cliff in a rescue device, haulin’ him to where we were gathered within safe distance of the edge.
This second one buckled at the knees and wept. Mia stepped forward to comfort him just as, unbeknownst to us, the remainin’ boy on the crumblin’ cliff changed position, causin’ rocks to slide beneath his feet. To everyone’s immense relief, we learned how the superhero deputy made it back down within a minute of that poor kid losin’ his footin’ entirely. The crowd let out a huge roar of cheers and applause as the third boy was dropped to the safety of his bawlin’ friends.
Fresh tears welled in my eyes as we drove by the site of where it had happened. Mia had promised me, as I was drivin’ home later that night, each of us still shakin’ that I need not ever worry on her account — she’d never do a thing as stupid as that. And to think I had believed her. Anyways, I’d say I am a fatalist by now. When it’s your time, it’s your time. We all do the dumbest things. There’s no real sense in it.
~ It was Bobby who brought up the subject of other real and present dangers that lurk along the coast. He always was obsessed with earthquakes, primarily the San Andreas Fault that runs directly beneath us out west. The guy had a morbid fascination with the rumbles of our region’s epic and infamous earthquake culture. He was ready, almost willin’ for the big one that we all know is on its way and soon.
I sat back and humored him as he rattled on in his usual fashion, though I’d heard it all too many times before to count. “You know,” he said, this time: “Back in the great quake of 1906, the earth shook so violently it pushed the land mass north some fifteen feet.” We all four gawped at the road ahead, half expectin’ it to crack apart and shoot us off the slick, wet cliff.
Maggie, Marcus and me were his captive audience: “Imagine it like this,” he said. “If you were to place two slices of pizza on a countertop a
nd slide them by each other at the part where they touch at the two straight sides,” he was reachin’ forward to demonstrate or mimic the movement with his hands, “chunks of toppin’ would soon start breakin’ off one slice and topplin’ on to the other. The same thing happens with earth and trees and structures atop the San Andreas as the slidin’ boundary between the Pacific Plate and the North American Plate shift.”
This was not what I needed to hear right then. It’s not that I don’t think it’s gonna happen. I had other, more pressin’ concerns and the brain can only take so much. “What we have here, folks, is a fault that has the capacity to slice the great state of California in two,” he declared: “all the way from the border of Mexico to Cape Mendocino in the north.”
Marcus egged him on in this banter on tectonic plates. “It’s true, brother,” he said. “These plates you’re talking of, they yield the very real potential for massive damage. People don’t like to acknowledge it.” This was another of the things the two friends had in common, their tendency toward earthquake preparedness. Today, tomorrow, ten years from now, Bobby’s box of emergency supplies won’t make much of a difference however much he liked to think it would.
“Take the ‘06 earthquake trail in Olema,” Marcus went on, despite my attempts to shush the pair of ‘em. “You won’t find a better spot to see the effect of just how far the earth moved. Most of the wake is covered in brush by now, though I know where to look if you really want to see it.”
“Thanks for the scary-ass geology lesson, guys,” I butted in, raisin’ my voice so they knew I meant it. “I am feelin’ like I know all I need to on the subject for now,” I said. “We’ve lived our whole lives tryin’ not to freak out about the next one, Maggie and me. We are not in need of any more constant reminders at this particular moment in time.”
“Babe, you’re livin’ in a bubble of denial when it comes to quakes,” Bobby shot back. “The San Andreas is not the least of it. Do you have any idea how many other plates there are to threaten us out here?”
I fixed my gaze on the ominous, blue-violet sky. Bobby was dogmatic at times. “OK, really, enough,” I snapped, turning my head to look out of the window, willin’ him to hush. “Fuck.” Marcus fiddled with the airflow to let in some air.
We were about to pass by the crab shack, the one that Bobby and me liked to drive out to every once in a while on the occasions when we were off work together, before I was sick. I figured Bobby would be easily sidetracked by the prospect of fresh seafood. It was me who suggested we stop off for a bite.
The cheerful little crab shack was packed with noisy commercial fishing crews comin’ in out of the rain for mornin’ coffee and donuts, chili and chowder, hot dogs and crab sandwiches.
We feasted, the four of us, in the cozy confine of the truck, overlookin’ scenic Bodega Head, half keepin’ watch for the spurt of the Western Pacific Gray Whales that journey to and from the warmer calfin’ lagoons of the Mexican waters from December through March. I bit into a fresh crab sandwich, its toasted, buttery juices running down my fingers onto a stack of paper towels I’d knowingly stacked on my lap. I believe it was the first time in months I’d felt my facial muscles relax.
Food had never tasted so good, truly, a sense of something like hope rose through me from the stomach up. I was gonna make it, Mia was gonna make it. It was OK to enjoy the sandwich, I told myself. It would all be OK.
Back on the road, it was Marcus who broached the subject of his work along the National seashore and how unlawful cannabis grows are tendin’ to encroach more and more on the parkland. “I’m forever on the look-out for roads and vegetation that’s been clear cut for access to these illegal grows,” he said, explaining how a big part of his job to preserve the coastal wilderness is protecting it from increasing numbers of rogue grow cannabis operations.
“Wherever I am, in any open space, I can’t help but keep my eyes peeled for telltale signs,” he explained, as he filled us in on how illegal grow sites are more often than not blatantly poisonous — pesticides and herbicides wipin’ out the habitat, leachin’ into groundwater, pollutin’ waterways, poisonin’ insects, birds and animals. I’d never heard him talk so much.
Marcus fears that most at risk are the endangered woodland creatures. “Human waste, abandoned garbage, fertilizers and other hazardous materials take vast amounts of time and money to contain and clear up and more often than not they’re left to rot,” he said. “These are toxic disaster zones for wildlife.”
“Makes me mad as hell to hear it . . . ” Bobby muttered. If there was one thing he’d retained from his family’s ranchin’ background, it was his deep respect for nature.
“Those at the start of it all, back in San Francisco in the Summer of Love, they were communal-minded folk and most of the growers still are,” Marcus added. “They were folk like me, wanting nothing from no one, not least the government. They set about leaving the City and making themselves invisible,” he said. “Survival depended on living in as sustainable a way as possible. The first growers produced most of their own food, they hunted, fished and figured out how to bring in pot-growing supplies without raising suspicions in town.”
It was these first, underground, back-to-the-landers who settled the forested regions of northernmost California, raisin’ their kids and now, later, their grandkids.
Not much different from my own folk, I reasoned. Once they’d put down their roots, they were fully entrenched on their land. These northern neighbors, homesteaders of the ‘60s and ‘70s soon figured which specific crops and farmin’ methods made the most money. Sadly, loggin’, millin’, dairy farmin’ . . . all but a few of these regional strongholds since reduced to relics of our proud agricultural heritage.
Marcus kept on, still, talkin’ of how outta hand it’s all become, how he’s found water lines buried underground when stumblin’ on illegal cannabis grows planted in partial shade and hidden under Manzanita bushes on some of the hardiest hillsides of the national seashore.
Maggie opened the window a sliver for a lungful of damp air. She’d tied her dark curls up into a ponytail. There is barely a silver thread runnin’ through her head of hair, lucky bitch. Marcus was steady and focused in his drivin’, handlin’ the slick curves of the road with ease.
“Let’s get real. Who, here, was a stoner in high school, other than my sister?” Maggie asked.
It was Marcus who answered her first. “Not me, on account of my being a jock. We snuck beers in after games with no choice but to steer clear of weed.” He’d been relatively clean of substances in the army, until the incident, he added. “If I’d failed a drug test, I would have been at risk of a pay cut at the least, a cut in rank, slammed in military prison, kicked out.”
Bobby freely admitted he’d been introduced to weed by the age of fourteen. He’d had his fill of it as well as downin’ a potent concoction of spirits — whiskey, vodka even the cookin’ sherry from his mother’s pantry, whatever it was he’d laid his hands on.
I’m dead sure I would have known if Mia was smokin’ while she was at home. She hadn’t gotten into it in high school as far as I could tell. She took after Maggie in that way. Maybe it was the reverse psychology of havin’ a stoner for a mom.
Me, on the other hand, I’d smoked like a chimney since I was in junior high. On and off in that I managed to quit for the time I was pregnant and almost a year of breastfeedin’. I’ve finally been able to wean my way off smokin’ since makin’ and experimentin’ with my edibles, figurin’ out lower dosage and frequency of dependency so as to get better and go about my business. As with any addiction, caffeine, tobacco, alcohol, gamblin’, even sex, I guess, withdrawal is just as much a big deal for longtime weed smokers like me. Dependent dosin’ was maskin’ what was really wrong and after Mia took off, I started to wake up to what I was doin’ to myself and my family, or not doin’. It’s taken me to this point in my life, 50 years old, for fuck’s sake to face the fact I’m a weed addict, however I choose to just
ify it. And it was the same weed that lured my baby away from me. It was past time to get it all out in the open, to start takin’ more control of my life and, unbeknownst to me, I was headed into the eye of the storm with little clue as to the consequences.
So, if you really wanna know, this is how it went down.
Chapter 16
Jazmin
So, if you really wanna know, this is how it went down. Mia and I look kinda similar. Her skin and her hair are as dark as mine on account of her dad being Mexican, who, by the way, she has never even met. She has eyes the color of toasted nuts, amber sorta, while mine are more of a deep chocolate brown. That’s pretty much where the similarity stops. I’ve had plenty of fun teasing her for being one wild chica due to the Irish/Mexican hot-blooded combo that runs through her veins. Mia’s mom’s folks go back generations on that ol’ ranch of theirs and whatever she has to deal with in the future, she knows, in the back of her mind, she has that to run back to. Me, I’m way more reserved in comparison to Mia on account of my family being uprooted from the country of my birth. I never did care for drawing too much attention to myself, except, I guess, when it came to Miguel. Aside from Mia, man, he really got me there while it lasted.
“Stay in the shadows,” that’s what my mom has told me since I was a little girl. Keep out of trouble — so much for that.
“Fuck the shadows and fuck the expectations,” Mia said. Her mom, my folks, none of ‘em knew a thing about making the sort of serious money we had in mind.
“Let’s get outta here, see a bit of action, make some dough,” Mia urged.
I was not so sure. She pushed me and I’m not laying any blame, I was happy to let her. Mia warned me over and over if I stayed home, I’d be knocked-up in no time, a trail of sticky-fingered little ones holding me back, dragging me down, stopping me from getting into nursing school.
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