“Thank you both so very much for your kind and generous hospitality,” I said, spontaneously hugging each of our hosts as we readied for bed. We’d lingered at the supper table ‘til late. “Please, don’t mention it,” Lizzie said. “It’s been real quiet up here, with the storms. We’re glad of the company, not least the chance to help you find Mia.”
We were up and ready to take off soon after daybreak. There had been another storm during the night and yet, I woke only once in the wee hours when the wind that had whispered and cooed through the forest at bedtime reached its most violent peak, with rain slamming in heavy sheets against the bedroom window. I’d risen and peered out of the window into the dark, howling night, barely able to make out the limbs and branches of the trees that were closest to the house. They bent and braced against the storm like the supple fingers of a frightened child.
“I feel there’s something wild and exhilarating about these winter storms so deep into the forest,” Marcus shared from the comfort of the bed, dreamily. Later, after we’d drifted back to sleep, we awoke a second time to the smell of fried bacon wafting under the bedroom door and a double alarm in the form of a loud series of kak kak kacking — the unmistakable call of the peregrine falcon.
“Listen,” Marcus whispered, placing two of his fingers on my lips. “This is the sound of the redwood forest, centuries of tree music in perfect tune with the bird kingdom and the whole rest of nature.”
“Your natural habitat,” I said, scooting closer under the covers to kiss his sleep-warm lips.
Marcus rolled out of bed and balanced on his crutch. He made his way over to the window and prized open its cast iron latch. As he flung it open to the elements, a flowery perfume scented the room with a thousand notes of wild, green, wintery vegetation. The essence of the Lost Coast mingled with the bracing air of the Pacific that blew across the treetops. The early morning mist shrouded the canopy and the ground below was thoroughly soaked.
A quick, hot water sponge bath removed the warm and sticky trace of our silent, late night lovemaking, laced with a lingering lavender scent of the soft linen bed sheets I’d stripped and set to launder in the washing machine.
We found Jack and Lizzie in the kitchen where he was busy making a pot of coffee. His mate stood at the range, frying bacon and eggs in a large, heavy skillet. We chatted over the freshly brewed coffee as Lizzie cracked an exotic, pastel blue colored egg on the edge of the iron skillet, its contents, a double yolk dropping neatly into the hot oil. Egg white hissed as it fried, the two, deep, dense, sunshine-colored yolks, sunny-side up, sizzled amidst the fast curling edges of the crispy white.
Jack seemed to want to talk more of how much things had changed. “Back in the day,” he said, “we grew accustomed to pulling in up to 4,000 dollars a pound. On condition of there being no pesticides in our cannabis ever, no chemicals.”
He described how they’d been able to get by for years on 20 to 30 pounds of sales each harvest season. “Now, we’re selling at half that price,” he said.
“If you don’t mind me asking, how do you work around the federal issue, banking, that sort of thing?” Marcus asked. “I guess you can’t pay taxes on it, even if you want to,” he ventured.
“We have never declared the income from our crop, nobody does,” Lizzie explained, with full transparency, I noted. “Pretty much every penny we make we put back both into the property and directly, as much as we’re able, into our community.”
By the time we left them, we were old friends, the four of us. We had Lori to thank and Walter, for Lori. I couldn’t help but wish they were my parents and that I had them to run home to.
Marcus had warmed to them immediately and they to him. “I used to consider it a weakness, asking for help,” he admitted, driving downhill on the weaving dirt road. Marcus was opening up to me a little more each day. He began to talk about how he’d always dreamed of building his own house, a home, like Jack and Lizzie’s someday.
“Ever since we were real small, my brother and me,” he confided, his voice now quavering slightly, “whenever we spent time with our grandpa in his workshop, we’d get to talking over some pretty darn big ideas for dream homes of our own.”
I gently massaged the back of his neck with my left hand as he drove and reminisced. His grandpa had urged the boys to think big when it came to their future. “Not surprisingly, I guess,” he said, “I lost sight of a lot of it after losing my brother and my grandmother, then him and, after the blast it was hard to see the point in anything to do with the future.”
“You know Marcus, rebuilding a sense of inner security takes time. Don’t beat yourself up, this is way more important than any material need we may have,” I said. I should know.
“I’m not so sure that I’m any where near as smart as you make me sound,” he replied, with a half smile. “I never thought I’d hear myself say this, Maggie, but it may be time for me to revisit the woodshop, start in on some new ideas.”
Funny, but I’ve found in learning to want less of late, I’ve been able to let myself imagine so much more. Maybe it is the same for Marcus, I think so. He changed gear multiple times as he navigated flooded spots of deep, standing water as we headed deeper into the forest.
Chapter 23
Marcus
Twilight falls in the month of February within the redwoods at around 6 p.m. This provided us with a good 11 hours on the road to stop off at campgrounds and visitor’s centers into Humboldt Redwood State Park, headed northward on the highway and through the small communities of Redcrest, Pepperwood and Rio Dell. Maggie showed Mia’s photo to a dozen or more convenience store workers, gas station attendants, tavern workers and the front desk staff of small inns and bed and breakfasts along the way.
It was my idea to spend a night or two in the truck so that we might cover more ground no matter how off the beaten track we veered. Not one person we spoke to remembered having seen Mia, specifically. This was no surprise given that there would’ve been so many young women her age passing through the region during harvest season. The fact that most of them took off after the trimming was done presented the slim chance of someone taking notice of her if she had managed to escape the compound at any point.
It was like we had the forest to ourselves. “For all its majesty, it sure is a creepy place come nightfall,” Maggie said as we readied my truck under its camper shell for bedding down. It was not nearly as comfortable as the previous three beds we’d shared, but it served its purpose and we would keep one another warm.
I looked up into the canopy of the still and shrouded giants. “To think they’ve been here for centuries, these same trees, the oldest of them anyway,” I said to myself. “Here they stand, listening, watching, whispering to one another as we, the humans of the world, go on making such a fucking mess of it all.”
We’d picked up a rack of ribs in foil and a tub of potato salad from a country convenience store we’d come across with an industrial barbecue set up under a covered porch.
It was dry out that evening, a rare and welcome change, a real good thing considering we would have faced a few extra hours of hunkering down in the truck bed had it kept on pissing it down. I’d pulled off into a quiet spot on a forest service road a little ways off the main route. The emergency supplies we’d packed back at the ranch had come into use. We rolled out a foam mattress that fit the truck bed. Maggie pulled out a heavy flashlight, folding chairs and a portable camping stove with propane from the stash we’d found in the barn.
No sooner than we were settled, a set of vehicle lights rose and dipped on the service road, heading in our direction. We watched, intrigued as a battered Sprinter van pulled up alongside.
“Marcus,” Maggie said, holding onto my arm. “Who the hell is this? Did someone follow us?”
I walked around the truck, popped the glove compartment and pocketed my knife. A weird looking, skinny, balding, middle-age-dude jumped out of his van. I’d been more concerned about a mountain lion or blac
k bear wandering out of an early hibernation than anyone pulling up beside us.
“What’s up?” I asked, keeping my distance. The dude was either a vigilante of some sort, desperate to make a connection or lost. “Howdy, man, how’s it going,” he replied, extending the opposite hand to the one that held a joint.
Maggie spoke: “You looking for someone?”
“No ma’am,” he replied. “It’s the cosmos I’m here for, would you just look up at them stars? It’s been a while on account of the rains.”
I could sense Maggie’s hackles rising. It was a bold and intimidating move to pull into an occupied space with hundreds of thousands of acres of forestland to choose from. “So, that’s cool,” I replied. “Are you planning on taking in the cosmos from here?”
“Yes, sir,” he answered. “This being one of my regular spots. I don’t mean to crowd you out or nothing, though I sure do appreciate the company.” With that, he rummaged around in his van for a minute or two and emerged with his own camp chair and a pile of blankets. “For sharing,” he said, “Stargazing is way more satisfactory with other folk about.”
Strange as he was, he offered Maggie one of his blankets. “For your shoulders, my dear,” he said.
To my surprise, Maggie allowed him to drape the blanket over her. She sat herself down on her chair, her grip on the flashlight I figured would’ve served as a good weapon of self-defense as any should she have deemed it necessary.
We spent the next couple hours shooting the breeze with Charlie and drinking sweetened hot cocoa from packets stirred into water I boiled over the camp stove. He told us how he’d been on the road a while, looking for enlightenment, traveling solo through the redwoods.
I’m not sure why it was I felt he posed no threat, it’s just one of those things you work out fast. “You’d be surprised,” I said, after we’d split our supper three ways, “but I have an acute fear of the dark.”
It was the blast that had made me most afraid of the unexpected, of exposure to whatever dangers might be lurking in the shadows.
Maggie moved her chair closer to mine. I didn’t plan on blurting out any more on the subject of my battle with PTSD. It just came out of me.
“It’s nothing new, your condition, dude, it’s been around for centuries,” Charlie replied, reading between the lines. “At least long as these redwoods have been on earth.”
He launched into a long, informed monologue on the Trojan warriors of Greece and the soldiers led by the House of Plantagenet in the Hundreds Years’ War no less. The more he smoked his spliff, the more he rattled on. He would’ve given Walter a run for his money as he touched on the tribal warriors in Africa, the soldiers of the Civil War and the troops who fought on both sides of the Spanish-American hostilities. “Let’s not forget the folk who have battled and survived the atrocities of The Great War, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, men and women who served in the Persian Gulf, the War in Iraq, hundreds of thousands of battle survivors who share the same symptoms from combat stress and injury as you,” he rattled on. It was an education and a half.
At the end of his long diatribe he came right out with asking how it felt to live with it day in and day out, the PTSD. “You want to know? It’s a constant fight or flight feeling,” I admitted. “Right now, this very minute, I can feel it in my muscular tissue, my heart, my lungs, my nerves, especially my brain.”
The best way I’m able to describe my PTSD is how I experience sensitivity to light, to noise, to no light, to no noise, spending so much of my life in some sort of constant battle to control these sensations of mind and body.
I threw it out there, despite my not wishing to freak out Maggie any more than I figured I already had. Truth is, I’ve suffered these frequent feelings of dread, fear and occasional rage for so long now, it’s almost commonplace. I’ve trained myself as best as I am able to resist the ratcheting up of the more violent feelings that may kick in at a moment’s notice. “It was hanging out in the forest where I first trained myself to get a grip on this fear of the dark,” I confessed.
I guess it was the peacefulness of the forest that moved me to be so brutally honest about this ever present, constant fight. I looked up into the stars and I let it all out. Tears ran down my face. Maggie, bless her heart, did not overreact and I was thankful for that. She sat real still and silent a while before announcing it time for she and me to call it a night, wishing Charlie a good sleep.
“Lock all the doors,” she instructed, soon after we’d clambered into the covered truck bed and lain down fully dressed on top of the foam mattress, our sleeping bags unzipped over our bodies in a double layer of eiderdown with an extra blanket on top to keep out the chill.
“It’s OK,” I said, “he’s not gonna pull any weird shit, other than already being way out there.” I guessed he was ex-military himself with his historic war trove of information, though he never gave us any other clue as to who he was or where it was he’d come from. I figured he had established in his own min that I was not a man to mess with.
By the time we awoke, early, before dawn, Charlie was gone.
“Well that was an experience,” Maggie said. “At least we’re alive to tell the tale.”
The ground was muddy and slick. I’d taken the risk of sleeping with my prosthetic still attached given the space logistics and lack of hot water and the off chance that Charlie may yet have posed a problem in the middle of the night.
We pressed on up to Fortuna, self-described ‘friendly city’, located in west central Humboldt, on the northeast shore of the Eel River. A sturdy and elderly waitress in a breakfast joint on Main Street enlightened us as to how it was the community had gotten its name: “Folks say it was a marketing tool cooked up by a local real estate agent and a minister back in the day,” she said. “The two of ‘em shrewdly petitioned to change it from its second known name of Springville, formerly Slide, so as to attract more folk to move on up here for the redwoods, the valley, its position on the river and proximity to the ocean.” Unfortunately, she, like all the others, had no memory of having seen Mia in the area.
Our table was inlaid with vintage photos of local memorabilia, faded images of the old Depot Museum located in the former train station that was employed to transport lumber out of the area. I ordered four eggs, sunny-side up, a side of bacon and hot, buttered, sourdough toast with black coffee. Maggie ordered a Swiss cheese and mushroom omelet with fruit and an English breakfast tea before heading into the restroom to wash her face. I appreciate a woman with good hygiene and a healthy appetite. We pressed on, fueled by our morning meal, asking about Mia at random stores and gas stations, making our way north to connect to the Ferndale/Petrolia Road, later, heading southwest into the well-preserved Victorian downtown of the small city of Ferndale, settled in the Gold Rush era by Europeans for its location at the mouth of the Eel as it feeds into the Pacific.
“The entire town is registered as a historic landmark, Marcus,” Maggie remarked, after we’d made a quick but thorough trek in and out of multiple brightly lit storefronts on Main Street. “And you know what, it was the dairy farming that led to all this lavish Victorian architecture back in the boom days,” she added. “Same time the McCleerys settled south on the Sonoma Coast.”
The only lead as to a possible sighting of Mia came from a server dude in a busy lunchette we’d stuck our head into. The kid said he might have seen her with another woman, older than her, a semi-regular who comes on in with her partner for the chicken noodle soup every now and again. It was fairly recent. “Can’t be sure, but it could have been her,” he said. “Haven’t seen her since.” He had no idea of the customer’s name or where she lived. “Pays with cash, like most.” he said.
It grew cold being close to the ocean and it was early evening by the time I swung the truck into the parking lot of the Old Six Mile House some miles south of Fortuna. Despondence was beginning to creep in. “What the hell are we doing, tooling around without any hope in hell of stumbli
ng on Mia’s whereabouts?” Maggie asked, her hands to her head. “This is all such a waste of time.”
I parked under the expansive, leathery green canopy of a pungent bay laurel. Back when it was built, a remote saloon and stage stop such as this would have been reachable only by unpaved roads that were at best, treacherous and muddy for most of the year.
Even now with decent enough roads, conditions are tough. Maggie shivered, zipping her jacket against the chill. “I need a drink,” she said, checking for cell phone reception as we made our way across a gravel parking lot into the warm light of the rustic roadhouse, its redwood paneled interior walls decked out with the usual taxidermy and rusty logging tools. A pile of old peanut shells crunched under foot.
“What is it with the goddamn shells?” she asked.
“Harkens back to Colonial days,” I replied. “Peanuts make for a mightier thirst, plus, I’d wager the natural oils were an added benefit to a hard-worn wooden floor.”
Maggie’s phone lit up on initial contact with a cellular connection. She’d missed several calls during the hours we had been out of reach.
“Bridget’s tried me three times,” she said, with a degree of instant panic in her voice. A third message was from Lori. She replayed it on speakerphone so that we both were able to hear the recording. “Call me, Maggie, as soon as you can,” Lori’s message relayed. “I have news.”
Maggie’s hands were shaking, visibly.
“Now look here,” I said, taking her hands in mine, “it’s not necessarily bad news.” I ordered drinks after we’d sat ourselves at the bar, a beer for me, a big ol’ glass of pinot noir, as requested, for her.
Few in this neck of the woods appear to have much of a taste for the better wines on the bar list, for I noticed the unopened bottle was coated in dust when the bartender took it from the shelf.
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