by Kim Fu
But none of these things happened. Jan remained immobile and inert, the same cloying, overripe sweetness. Morning came, and the battery in her flashlight had died.
Around dusk on the second night, a new sound tore through the lapping of the water and rustling of the trees, a mechanical roar. A motorboat rounded the bend, a few hundred meters out. Isabel stood at the water’s edge and screamed. Her voice was no match for the blare of the motor. She jumped up and down and waved her arms. She cursed her dead flashlight, hoped they could see her tiny figure in the twilight.
The motor cut out. The boat continued to drift, parallel to the shore, and Isabel could see two figures on the deck. She redoubled her shouting. She can’t remember what she was yelling, if it was even words.
The boat slowed and almost stopped, still a fair distance away. The figures appeared to be conferring with each other. Finally, one of them dropped an anchor, and the other jumped from the boat and swam toward Isabel.
Isabel ran out into the ocean. She saw that it was a man. Tall and broad-shouldered with a beard and a large, solid belly, dressed in a fishing bib. He strode powerfully through the shallow water. She threw herself at him, clutching the slippery, waterproof fabric over his legs. He scooped her into his arms, lifting her, cradling her against his massive chest like the baby he assumed she was.
What Isabel’s body remembered, now, was the sight of her rescuer in the water, like an ocean god with the power to give and to take away. The strength of his arms, the warmth and smell and safety of his chest, how she trembled with relief in his embrace. She was eleven, and he was the true first, the one who woke her to the wonder and beauty and horror and violence that came from loving men.
Where’s Victor?
The sheets smell like him. Also like something else, something sour and oily. Like rancid peanut butter.
His slippers are in the front hall. Blue foam with raised massaging bubbles. Three dollars at the Asian supermarket. They had a distinct rhythm as he walked around the house, slapping his feet and then the floor, thwap-thwap, thwap-thwap, like a heartbeat.
His towel hangs in the bathroom. Black mold grows in streaks on the side of the toilet, fills the gap at the base of the drain in the sink, circular blooms on the windowsill above the tub. The house seems like an unnatural incursion on the land; the mold reclaims.
His swim trunks blown off the clothesline, a small mound in the center of the backyard.
His coffee mug on the counter, the dregs dried to the bottom, a solid block with cracks that weave like canyons.
A room of his half-unpacked computers and books. A book on the desk, with a bookmark thirty pages in. Where he’ll come back to it.
Where’s Victor?
Right here, beside her. The edge of his shirt slips from her empty fist. The bed is warm on his side. Her skin is alert from a kiss.
At work. In another room. Around the corner.
Isabel thinks of her college roommates. There was a time before Victor. There was a time before Isabel, for Victor. There are friends and co-workers who probably deserve to come together and grieve, an event to give shape and closure to their loss. But why should they get that, when Isabel will never have it?
The entryway is filled with envelopes. Too many for anyone to sort through, a lifetime’s worth. Twenty voice mails and none.
There are too many things that she should do. More than can be done.
They have no clocks, only computers and phones that have to be prompted to display the time.
Orphan, widow. As everyone must be, eventually. Orphan, widow, or dead. Orphan, widow, and then dead.
A house once meant permanence. Now Isabel can see how flimsy it really is. How quickly a house goes up—studs, frame, drywall, roof, tossed together, quick pops of a nail gun, a thoughtless smear of mud. Slapped together in a couple of months, meant to last a hundred years. An eternity, with proper care. As though the water doesn’t rise or recede, the weather doesn’t turn. The splitting of a seam here, dripping there, a crack, a patch, new window, new shingles, new gutter, burst pipe, rewire, but see how it’s unstoppable, entropy and time, how we have to be constantly building without rest, constantly redesigning the levees and draining the swamp, the illusion of city and settlement, the idiotic hubris, how plants can break through concrete then wither in your hand. How everything tends toward a smooth, featureless earth, uncomplicated by ambition, by life.
Where’s Victor?
Victor’s body on the table in that room, where she relived the death of her parents, a long-repressed night in a tent. Every death the same death, each death every death.
Victor’s body like the chickens her parents had boiled whole, beak to feet. Like the sheep’s eyeball she’d dissected in a high school science class. Something base and biological, loosely held together, arranged to look like Victor. Except for his hair, dried stiff from the salt water. That hadn’t changed.
Victor, get up. It’s time to go.
Where’s Victor?
Ashes in a box, sent airmail to Hong Kong.
Where’s Victor?
Out on the ocean, where he was happiest. Open water in all directions, too far to see from land, too small to see by the satellites above. Catching a wave.
The doorbell is ringing. It’s always ringing. She goes to answer.
Camp Forevermore
And then there were four. They trudged into the undefined woods, the only way to leave the beach without swimming. Bag straps crisscrossed their torsos, made them into lumpy, unwieldy creatures, lumbering forward. Nita at the back, carrying the heaviest load, a fact that had gone undiscussed. Siobhan at the front, compass in hand, checking it anxiously every few minutes to make sure they were still walking in a relatively straight line. Andee and Dina in the middle. Dina kept looking back, stumbling under the weight of the packs, her thoughts as clear as if they’d been projected in a bubble over her head: she wished she’d stayed back with Isabel.
Siobhan understood. Already the beach where they’d camped seemed safer, like a home, a place they had eaten and slept, a place they’d been happy.
They walked for an hour, then two. Siobhan had thought that they would walk into the trees and quickly find their end, emerge on the other side on a road full of rushing cars, enough that they could pick and choose: wait for a police car, or a mother with children, as Siobhan had been taught.
They were walking very slowly, careful of the vines and tree roots, looking for the best possible footing, the avenues presumably cut by animals. Siobhan was sweating buckets, but she couldn’t take off her fleece or windbreaker without unstrapping the bags. They were climbing a hill, or a mountain, that hadn’t been a visible part of the landscape from the beach. Siobhan searched her memories of this island, from visiting with her parents—ferry, motel, ice cream stand. It had seemed tiny, provincial, quaint. How could it go on and on like this? How could it be so large, contain so many discrete parts where people couldn’t find one another?
When the ground started to level out, they stopped for water and each ate their camp-issued cookie ration, “chocolate chip” flecks that looked like rat droppings. Once Dina swallowed her cookie, her eyes filled, as though agonized that there wasn’t more.
“I hope Isabel is okay,” Siobhan said.
No one answered. They were too caught up in their own pain and fear, individually, to take on someone else’s. They sat or lay on their backs on the ground, breathing heavily, until Nita said, “I guess we should keep going.” No one argued. They helped one another re-knot the bag straps, swaying under the uneven weight distribution.
Now, from the elevation they’d gained, Siobhan expected to come to a lookout point, somewhere they could survey the whole island, see the road, the ferry terminal, know exactly which way to go. But that didn’t happen either. They started to descend, digging in their heels to resist the pull of the slope.
“I can’t,” Dina gasped. She tilted in the direction of one of the packs and then fell co
mpletely over. “I can’t keep going.”
Andee flopped down dramatically, as if in protest. “Me neither.”
Nita and Siobhan glanced at each other. Siobhan felt something had changed between them since Isabel had insisted on staying, since Andee had stabbed Jan in the foot. A necessary shift in allegiances. “I’m sure we’re almost there,” Siobhan said.
Andee held out her hand. “Sandwiches. Water. Now.”
Nita snorted. She had the food bag. “Get up.”
“And the marshmallows,” Dina said. Sniveling, but mad.
“It’s lunchtime anyway,” Siobhan said. She wished they’d stopped in a more convenient spot. Sharp rocks jutted out of the dirt, and they were still on a downslope.
“Fine,” Nita said. “I just want to remind you, these are our only sandwiches.”
Siobhan tried to rub the dirt off her hands onto her pants, but they were no cleaner. Her PB&J seemed small, as all the camp-issued sandwiches did, white bread as thin and flavorless as card stock, a trickle of jam, barely enough peanut butter to stop up their dry mouths. The marshmallows, by contrast, tasted like salvation, and the girls shoved their hands into the mostly empty bag, racing one another, testing how many fit in their mouths, until they were gone.
“We’ll be in town by dinner,” Siobhan said.
“Maybe the police will buy us dinner,” Andee said.
“There’s a diner, I think.” Siobhan tried to sound encouraging. “With burgers. And French fries. And chili and milkshakes . . .” Dina groaned.
They came upon a dribbling creek soon after lunch. Nita scooped an experimental sip into her mouth. “How does it taste?” Andee asked.
“Uh, metallic, I guess.”
Siobhan asked, “Does it taste safe?”
“How should I know? What does safe water taste like?” Nita drank another handful.
“Well, you’re still drinking it,” Dina said.
“So we can just wait and see,” Andee said darkly. Nita gulped a little more, took out the water bottle they’d emptied, and filled it with creek water.
They continued downhill, shaded by the thickening spruce trees, the light beginning to fall at an angle. The other Forevermore groups would be back by now, the neon-green army returning home, triumphant. When would their absence be noticed? By dinner? The electric lights of the cabins and communal buildings set aglow, the singing and fist-banging on the long tables under plastic tablecloths, the steamer trays of a hot meal. Would they send someone to Lumpen in the dark, or wait until daylight? Would they call the police? Their parents? An itch started inside Siobhan’s T-shirt and fleece, under her ribs, creeping across her back and stomach, like leaves and hair were trapped inside. Or those minuscule bugs that lived in their Forevermore cabins, each the size of a pinhead, small enough to get through the window screens, distinct from dirt by their movement, small as dust in your eye.
A break in the trees ahead, a shimmer between them. Relief, and then. “No,” Siobhan said, aloud.
“Is that . . .” Nita began.
Siobhan hurried ahead, through the gap, toward the steady thrum of sound that was not, not at all, the sound of passing cars. “No,” she said again.
The ocean. The same type of gritty, inhospitable sand they’d left behind, now on the opposite side of the island.
Nita appeared beside her. “We walked all the way across,” she said, astonished. “Without ever hitting a road.”
Andee and Dina stayed a few steps back, radiating a dangerous emotion, like a smell.
Nita took off her packs. It was a slow process. The other girls watched in silence. Nita picked up a solitary fallen branch from the brush. She started drawing in the sand. “Okay, so this is the island. We walked across it east to west, without hitting anything. So I guess tomorrow we should go north-south.”
“Tomorrow?” Dina echoed, her voice tight and panicked. “Tomorrow?”
Siobhan looked out across the water. An anemic sunset, claw streaks of salmon. “Tomorrow,” she said. She stripped off her bags and felt a deep release in her muscles. She scratched wildly at her skin.
“I don’t think we have time to make a fire,” Nita said. “We should just set up the tent as fast as possible.”
“Do you know how?” Siobhan said. She’d been carrying the tent, the poles prodding her for hours.
“Um, I’ve never done it by myself, but we can probably figure it out. We watched Jan do it yesterday.”
“That was only yesterday?” Siobhan said. “It feels like forever ago.”
As they had at that morning’s fire, Siobhan talked—“I think the first thing Jan did was the posts”—and Nita acted, Siobhan and Andee holding pieces in place while Nita experimented, saw which way each pole bent.
“Why is this so hard?” Siobhan groaned, after their arrangement of poles had collapsed for the tenth time.
“Maybe we’re hungry,” Dina said. “My mom says girls get stupid when they’re hungry.”
They laid down their poles and sat on the bare ground. They’d left the tarp with Isabel in an effort to reduce the load. They shared the two cold, slimy hot dogs, barely a bite each. After an unsatisfied pause, they took turns coating their mouths in instant hot-cocoa powder. Only Jan’s stash remained. Nita said they would have to save it for the next day.
“That’s probably a good idea,” Siobhan said, an edge to her voice. She was still ravenous, and she resented Nita for being so controlled, so reasonable.
“This is seriously all we’re going to eat?” Andee said. The food bag was tucked between Nita’s knees, the top unzipped, rounded and gaping like a mouth. Andee reached toward it. “What about Jan’s candy and trail mix? Couldn’t we just . . .”
Nita snatched up the bag, lifting it off the ground and holding it shut. “We don’t know how long it’ll take to get to town tomorrow.”
“We’ll need energy for walking, though,” Andee said. She advanced suddenly on Nita, lunging forward, but Nita was quicker. She was on her feet and a few steps back, the food bag still in her grip, maintaining the distance between her and Andee. Dina’s eyes flicked back and forth between them.
“No,” Nita said. “You’ll thank me tomorrow.”
Andee, Siobhan, and Dina exchanged a look, and Siobhan recognized something feral in Dina’s and Andee’s expressions, something she felt too, in her gut. Their shoulders were up, their bodies alert. They were hungry, and Nita stood between them and food. Siobhan thought: The three of us could overpower her. Saliva pooled in her mouth. She could almost taste the gummy bears and the candy bar. She felt herself rising to her feet, not knowing what she planned to do.
A rustle in the nearby brush startled them. They turned toward the sound. “What was that?” Siobhan whispered.
Nita said, “It could be a person. Should we go investigate?”
“What if it’s an animal?” Dina hissed.
Nita squinted into the woods. “Hello! Is anybody there?”
Siobhan caught a flash of movement. Not a person. A hunched-over shape, shorter and wider and longer and swifter, one dark hue that blended into the trees and the early-evening shadows as it barreled away from them.
“Wait!” Nita called. “Come back! We’re just kids! Help us, please!”
Siobhan touched her arm. Nita jumped. “I don’t think that was a person.”
“What was it?” Dina asked. “Was it a cougar? A bear?”
The three girls looked expectantly at Siobhan. None of them had seen. Siobhan felt her front teeth catch her lower lip, the way they always did before she lied. “No, something smaller. Like a raccoon or something? Anyway, it’s gone now.”
They listened a little longer, leaning slightly toward the woods, their chins raised and ears pricked like pointer dogs. After a few minutes, their tired bodies relaxed, equally relieved and disappointed.
Nita sat down again, her arms still wrapped around the food bag. Andee picked up the empty hot-chocolate pouch and peered inside it. “You�
�re right, Nita. We should save the food for tomorrow. I’m sorry.”
“Me too,” Siobhan said, though she hadn’t done anything, not really. Not yet. The moment when she’d felt them turning on Nita, a shared, pack-animal instinct, had passed, retreating into the woods with the real animal. Dina was still staring fixedly in the direction that it had gone, but her eyes were strangely empty, the fear burned out.
She said, “What if no one ever finds us?”
Siobhan tried to conjure up the hope and affection she’d felt for Dina the day before, to once again see her physical beauty as moral goodness.
Andee stuck her index finger in her mouth. She ran her saliva-coated finger around the hot-chocolate pouch, trying to recover any dust caught in the seams. She looked sideways at Siobhan, and Siobhan knew that Andee hadn’t quite believed her about the “raccoon.” Andee said, “Then the cougars and bears can eat us.”
Siobhan regretted leaving all of the fruit cocktail with Isabel. Then she felt guilty—Isabel was probably out of food too—and the guilt made her itchy all over again. “Do you think Isabel’s okay?” she asked, scratching her stomach.
“Probably better than us,” Nita said. “She didn’t walk all day for nothing.”
“What if we walk and walk tomorrow, and we still don’t see anyone?” Dina continued. “What about when we run out of food?”
Andee finished sucking on her finger, drawing it from her mouth with a pop. “I vote we eat Dina.”
“I’m cold,” Dina said. Her voice had gone eerily flat. “I’m cold and I’m tired and I’m hungry and my stomach hurts and I hate this and I’m scared and I want to go home and no one’s going to find us and we’re going to die out here. Like Jan. We’ll be nothing and empty, like Jan.”
No one answered.
“I’m cold too,” Nita said finally. “Let’s give the tent another try.”