by Luanne Rice
The bridge was high.
It was made of ornate green metal, as if it had been built a long time before by someone who wanted it to look beautiful in this lovely natural setting. It spanned an inlet, only about thirty feet wide, of water rushing to the sea. A brook started it all, up in the hills, widening as it tumbled over rocks and moss, entering the wide silver sea at this spot under this bridge.
“Guard dogs who won’t train are worth shit,” Buddy said, looking Amy in the eye. He drew his foot back as if he were going to kick Orion in the bag.
“Don’t kick him,” Amy howled.
“You think you can bargain for this dog?” Buddy asked.
Amy stared. She heard the lobster boat buzzing like a mosquito in the distance. Waving or calling for help wouldn’t do any good. The boat was too far away. This was between her and Buddy.
“Go ahead,” Buddy said. “Bargain.”
“Let him go,” Amy whispered, watching Orion move in the bag. She thought of how dark it must be in there, and she hoped he felt a little safer, the way he felt when he was under the bed.
“Keep talking …” Buddy said, touching Amy’s hair.
“Please,” Amy said, crying.
“Please?” he asked.
Breathing funny, Buddy brought his face close to hers. She felt his slimy fingers on her cheeks, sliding down her neck. He took her hand, pressed it on the front of his jeans.
She squeaked, trying to hold back her sob. She tried to think of Dianne, of her strength, of what she would do. Buddy had been smoking, and he dropped his cigarette on the road. She heard him grind it out with his boot. When she opened her eyes, he was holding the sack higher. Now he had purpose in his narrow gaze, as if he were thinking of Amy now and all he wanted to do was get rid of the dog.
“No,” Amy said, seeing him move toward the rail.
“Unfinished business,” he said.
And then he dropped the sack.
Amy looked down. The water rushed and swirled. It was dark, brown with weeds and silt from the land. The sack hit the water with a big splash. It floated for a minute. Amy held her breath, tears flowing down her face. She prayed to see Orion’s nose, his front paws with their little white tips, emerge from the sack.
The sea carried the sack out the inlet quickly. It moved as it flowed, as if the puppy were fighting to get free. Amy could almost see the dog’s legs kicking as the burlap bag tumbled along in the current.
The bag floated for a few seconds more, and then it started sinking.
“No!” Amy screamed.
Orion can swim, Amy thought. If he could just get out. She had seen him swim in Dianne’s marsh, on the beach at Prince Edward Island. He was a water dog, a good swimmer! But he was trapped inside the sack, drowning before her very eyes.
“You wanna walk or you wanna ride?” Buddy asked.
Amy bit her lip. She was sobbing blindly, watching the burlap bag sink. She felt his hand on her hair, tugging gently, as if he were just playing. She thought of all the things she’d talked about with Marla Arden, she thought about sinking into the swamp of Buddy’s world, and then she thought of Dianne and Julia and life worth living. Amy thought about saving her own life.
Hers and Orion’s.
Amy jumped off the bridge.
Amy swam and drifted. The water was freezing. She gulped, trying to stay afloat. The sea pulled her in, drawing her away from the land. Buddy standing on the bridge looked so far away. He was staring at her, but then he got into his car and drove off. She saw that, the way he just left her for dead.
The current pulled her so Amy hardly had to swim. She was weighted down with her jeans and coat, yanking her under. The waves were small here, but big enough to splash over her head, go up her nose. She tried to yell for Orion, but she couldn’t make a sound. She barely had the energy to breathe.
From up above Amy had been able to see the sack. It had seemed like such an easy thing: to dive in and swim straight to the dog and save them both. She felt the panic of knowing she didn’t have time. The burlap bag had sunk, she had seen it, and even now Orion would be choking on seawater. The inlet that had looked so narrow was actually wide, and the sea that was pulling her along was vaster than she had ever imagined.
Daddy, she thought.
He was under the waves, her father. Amy’s eyes stung with saltwater and salt tears, and she struggled, feeling for her dog, for Orion. She wanted him to swim up and nudge her; together they would stroke toward shore. Her father was a dolphin; sleek and strong, he could bear them to safety.
The tide was ebbing. It was pulling freshwater from the brooks and streams, ponds and rivers, straight out to the sea. Amy fought against it, knowing the farther out she went, the worse it would be. She cried, struggling against her wet clothes. Waves broke over her head. They were bigger now, because she had drifted so far out.
The waves smashed her down. They tossed her up and smacked her down. Amy fought them. The harder she resisted, the more it hurt. She could hardly get a breath. The sky was steel gray, and it blended into the waves. Foam filled her nose. She choked, fighting the sea. And then she remembered Dianne.
“Be a seal,” Dianne had told her last summer when she had taught her to ride the waves.
Be a seal, Amy thought. She made herself sleek and straight. Not a dolphin, not a black dog. She wasn’t thinking straight. A seal, she told herself. Free of everything, so slippery, she’d just slide through the crashing waves. Orion and her father were helping her, Dianne was telling her to keep her head down, her arms out straight. Bodysurfing, that’s right. So what if it’s November, so what if there’s no beach?
Amy just thought of the people and dog she loved so much, and she kept her head down just like Dianne had told her, and she made herself sleek like a seal, and she held her breath until she thought her lungs would burst, and that is how Amy Brooks came to ride the waves to safety, straight onto the Landsdowne Shoal.
Only one rock protruded from the sea, and only for one fraction of one hour twice every day. The tide had gone out enough, and it hadn’t turned to come back, so that rock was exposed and Amy was able to haul herself up. Sputtering, spitting up seawater, shivering so hard she couldn’t control her limbs, Amy climbed onto the jagged brown rock.
A lobster boat was circling a buoy. Amy saw it now. She tried to raise her arm, but when she moved, she lost her grip and began to slide off the rock.
“Help!” she yelled.
The rock was coated with black sea moss as slimy as grease. It was covered with barnacles and mussels, and they sliced Amy’s hands with their shells. From up there Amy could see all around. She screamed for help, but she didn’t stop scanning the surface for Orion.
“Help!” she called. “Save me!”
There was no one on land. Buddy’s car had disappeared. The lobsterman leaned overboard, pulled up one of his pots. His engine was going. Couldn’t he hear her? Amy screamed louder. “Daddy!” she heard herself screaming. “Daddy!”
She was just like a baby now. She was sobbing so hard, clinging to a rock that wouldn’t hold her, grieving for the puppy she had been unable to save. “Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy!” rang in her ears.
The boat was going away. She saw it sweep around in a big circle, its wake spreading out behind like a train of white stars. The whitewater churned and foamed, then smoothed into a silver river as bright and wide as the Milky Way. Stars danced before Amy’s eyes, through her tears.
“Help!” she screamed one last time, watching the boat leave her behind. “Help me!”
A dog barked.
Trembling, Amy couldn’t believe her ears. She clung to her rock, icy water streaming down her body. Straining to listen, she heard it again: a dog’s sharp, insistent yelps. Oh, Orion, she sobbed. She was dreaming of her puppy.
“Help!” Amy cried. “Help me!”
The boat turned around. Its hull was white with a red cove stripe, and its bow was pointed straight at Amy, coming head-on. She shiv
ered and slipped. The stars were brighter, flashing in her eyes. She spit out more seawater, scrambled to hold on. The barking dog sounded louder. Amy was drowning, going to the sea, Orion was calling her into the deep to be with her father.
“Hang on,” a man’s voice called. “Just hold tight.”
“I can’t,” Amy cried, her hands sore and bleeding, the waves splashing her feet and legs.
“Here we are,” the man said. “Okay, just a second—”
He cut the engine. The boat drifted closer. The man was short and old, with gray whiskers and a yellow slicker over his bright orange overalls. His face was as withered as one of Amy’s apples, and his eyes were blue as a summer sky. He was talking nonstop, saying something about having to take care in shoal waters, not wanting to sink his boat before he had the chance to save her.
“Give me your hand,” he said, reaching out his arm.
“I can’t,” Amy said, clinging like a snail to her rock.
“Come on,” he said. “That’s a girl. What a brave girl you are, there. Just give me your hand. Come on …”
Amy closed her eyes. She didn’t want to be such a chicken, but she had the feeling that if she let go, she’d sink under the sea and never come up again.
“Okay, dear,” the man said, incredibly patient considering his boat was being dashed against the shoal. “Just let go. Let go of the rock and grab me instead. I’ll catch you—”
Amy cried. She thought of Julia having her seizure. Julia’s teeth had been chattering just like Amy’s, she couldn’t stop herself, and there’d been no kind lobsterman to save her. Nothing Dianne did, nothing anyone did …if Julia could be so brave, every day, all the time …sea gulls were flying overhead, screeching at the bait and lobster in the man’s boat, and they sounded to Amy like Julia: “Dleee, dleeee.”
If Julia could do it …
Grasping the rock with one arm, Amy reached out for the man. His gnarled hand grabbed hold of her wrist.
My daddy was a fisherman, she wept.
But she must not have said it out loud, because the man didn’t reply right away. He seemed to be too choked up himself. He pulled a blanket out of a chest and laid it on top of her. Amy was too weak and filled with shock and grief to move. She just lay on the deck and wept.
“There, little one,” the man said. “There you go.”
“Daddy,” Amy cried.
“Got to get us off the shoal now,” the man said. “Before we sink.”
“My daddy sank,” Amy cried.
“Did he? I’m sorry,” the man said, giving a little throttle. “But that’s not going to happen to us today. Not today, not a lucky day like this.” Lucky, Amy sobbed, shaking her head as she thought of her dog, of how she had failed Orion.
“Not every day I get to pull two young ones out of the cold sea,” the man said.
“Two?” Amy asked, confused.
“Two,” the man said, reaching down to pull her blanket up a little higher. “You and the pup.”
Amy blinked the water out of her eyes. There, standing over her, was Orion. He looked noble and proud, as if he had just swum the English Channel. He was shivering, shaking his coat every ten seconds, but his tongue was red and hanging out in a great happy-dog smile.
“He was swimming out there,” the man said, gesturing with his thumb. “Thought he was a seal at first, but it’s too early in the year for them to be migrating down this far. Then I thought he was a duck.”
“Orion!” Amy cried.
“Just swimming in circles, he was. I pulled him aboard. He was hiding back in the stern, but he must’ve heard you yelling for help.”
“Dogs have the best hearing,” Amy said, kissing Orion’s ears.
“He saved your life,” the man said. “If he hadn’t given out that loud bark, I never would have seen you.”
“Orion,” Amy breathed.
“Ah, he’s yours,” the man said. “Well, that’s fitting. Isn’t that fine? A dog saving his young mistress’s life like that. Wait’ll we tell everyone on the dock about that. Just wait.”
“Oh, Orion,” Amy said, holding him tight. She’d been thinking it had been the other way around, that she had jumped in to save his life. Amy thought of the people who had come to help her on that slippery rock: her father, Dianne, and Julia. Especially Julia. And then the man, the strange and wonderful fisherman who had saved her dog. And Orion, who had barked his head off to save her life.
They passed the red nun and the bell buoy marking the entrance to Hawthorne harbor. The bell tolled deep and true. The three white church spires pierced the pewter-gray sky. There was the brick building where Dr. McIntosh had his office. Flags whipped in the wind. The great white sea captains’ houses stretched along the water’s edge, and Amy and Orion knew how it felt to return from a dangerous voyage.
Dianne made up the bed in Julia’s room. Amy would be staying for a few days. The police had arrested Buddy for kidnapping, and although they didn’t believe Tess Brooks was involved, they wanted to make sure. The CWS wasn’t taking any chances.
“He’s going to jail, right?” Amy asked.
“He’s there already,” Dianne said.
“Just like in my story,” Amy said.
“Where Dickie goes to jail,” Dianne said.
Amy nodded. She was sitting on the floor, holding Julia on her lap. Ever since coming to the house, she had wanted to hold Julia or be close to her; she didn’t seem to want to let her out of her sight. Dianne heard Amy kiss Julia’s face.
“Gleee,” Julia whispered.
“You’re my friend,” Amy whispered back.
“Gleee,” Julia said.
Dianne listened to the children. She loved how Julia’s life changed when Amy was around. Julia struggled to be more alert. She unwound from the fetal position. Her voice grew stronger. Her hand began to pat the air. Orion and Stella lay beside them. Stella had been overjoyed to see the dog, and she was draped over his head, licking his ears. No one wanted to be far apart from one another.
“You girls okay in here?” Lucinda asked, poking her head in.
“We’re safe and sound,” Amy said.
Dianne’s throat choked up. Amy’s optimism was inspiring. She had just gone through that brutal experience, and she was trying to be cheerful. Dianne knew some of it was an act. Amy jumped at loud sounds. She had seemed subdued when she’d walked through the door with Alan, and he had said that saying good-bye to her mother had been very hard.
“I’m finishing up the stuffing,” Lucinda said. “For the turkey. Would anyone like to help?”
“Sure,” Amy said, but she didn’t let go of Julia.
“The last pie’s baking,” Lucinda said.
“It smells good,” Dianne said.
“What kind?” Amy asked hesitantly.
“Apple, of course,” Lucinda said. “For my apple girls.”
“No mince,” Amy said, shuddering. “As long as we don’t have mince …”
“I promise,” Lucinda said.
“In my story,” Amy said, breaking down, “Catherine felt so good when Dickie went to jail. I thought I’d feel better. But I keep seeing his face, the way he looked when he dropped Orion off the bridge. His eyes were blank. He might have just been littering!”
“Don’t think about it,” Lucinda said. “Don’t waste your good mind picturing that horrible man.”
“I can’t help it,” Amy sobbed, rocking Julia.
Dianne walked over to the girls. She crouched down, and put her arms around both of them. She rested her forehead against Amy’s.
“Oh, Amy,” Dianne whispered.
“Dianne,” Amy said, clutching Dianne’s sweater.
Dianne understood how a good person’s mind could be drawn to the worst in people, the ugliest of human nature. How, with everything gentle in the world, we could fix on the troubled. She had it within herself: All the years she could have been loving Alan, she’d been twisted up with hating Tim.
No sum
mer breeze, calling birds, or shooting stars had been able to chase those feelings away. Dianne had heard Tim’s last words, the door slamming, his footsteps walking away, for years and years. Dianne wished Amy could erase her fears, but she feared that Amy would be seeing Buddy’s blank stare for the rest of her life.
“Why?” Amy asked. “Dianne, how could a person do what he did?”
“I don’t know,” Dianne said.
“Maaa,” Julia said, her eyelids fluttering.
“I keep trying to figure it out,” Amy wept. “How could he be that mad at a little dog? How could he be that angry but look as if he didn’t care?”
Dianne breathed quietly. She just held the girls, rocking them against her body. She wanted to give them the comfort of her warmth, the beat of her heart. Some things in life couldn’t be explained or figured out. She had spent years trying to make sense of the senseless. How could any mother understand what had happened to Julia? Why she had been born the way she had. Why her father had left and her mother had stayed.
“He’s in jail,” Lucinda said. “That’s the important thing. Just like in ‘Sand Castles’: Justice will be served.”
“I’m not going to win the contest,” Amy said, wiping her eyes. “My story never even got turned in.”
“It’s not too late,” Lucinda said. “I have pull down at the library, you know.”
Amy just shook her head, and that pierced Dianne’s heart. Amy shuddered as if remembering something so painful she couldn’t put it into words.
“Amy?” Lucinda pressed.
“It’s a bad story,” Amy said. “It hurt my mother’s feelings. I don’t want to hand it in, Lucinda. Thank you for helping me, but I just want to forget about it.”
“Hmm,” Lucinda said. She stood in the doorway. The aroma of apple pie baking drifted up the stairway. Dianne could feel her mother wanting to fix this situation with the story, but she was holding herself back. “Well, if you say so. A bargain’s a bargain though. I told you win or lose, you were going to The Nutcracker.”