by Roland Smith
I looked at Coop. “Aren’t you going to read them?”
“Sure.” He picked up the pages.
“Later,” Alex said.
Coop shrugged and put the pages in his pocket.
“How far away is this Cannon Beach?” Alex asked.
“A couple of hours,” Coop answered. “I stayed there for a week the last time I was in Oregon. Manzanita is about a half an hour south of Cannon Beach. Tiny beach town. I only spent a few hours there.”
“We need wheels,” Alex said.
“Darien,” Coop said.
“Who?”
“A train conductor I met,” Coop answered. “He fixes up cars on the side. He has several for sale.” He pulled Darien’s phone number out of his pack.
All we had to do now was find a pay phone.
on the way to Darien’s, Coop let me read Kate’s journal entries. There weren’t many.
It is nearly impossible to capture my feelings in this little notebook. In the Deep we were taught to ignore our feelings, to hide them from others, to avoid conflict and corruption of the group.
I feel fear, anxiety, joy, and wonder.
Confused, vigilant, and lonely.
All at the same time.
Out of control.
Adrift.
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I watch everyone on the train.
Threat?
Safe?
I listen to their conversations and make up stories about who they are. I wonder what stories they make up about me. Can they even imagine?
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I miss Coop. I worry about him. What is this feeling I have toward him? Love? But how could that be? I barely know him. What does he feel toward me? I suppose I’ll find out soon. We are all headed to Portland, Oregon — different trains, different routes. Will Coop be there? Will Pat? Ha. Will I?
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Chicago. Alex texted me back. Compromised. Lod knows where I am. Or where I was. I threw out the computer and cell. Off the grid. My comfort zone. I’m moving west again. Will he follow me? Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Washington, Oregon. At which little station will he or a Pod member be waiting for me? I will not get off the train unless I have to transfer. This way I will not lose my bulkhead seat. I have everything packed. Ready to go. Ready to run.
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More vigilant now. I’m no longer making up stories about the people I see. Instead, I evaluate their threat level. But this does not stop me from looking out the window. The views are breathtakingly open, nothing but land for as far as I can see. I knew some of these places. When I was younger Lod and I would pore over nature photography books. We had hundreds of them in our apartment. It seemed there were very few places he hadn’t been to before he went underground. He spoke of these wild places with love and devotion.
I once asked him why he didn’t revisit them. He told me that it would be too sad. “These are just snapshots. Moments in time, carefully choreographed to please the eyes. Most of these wild places no longer look this way. They have been corrupted by our government, corporations, and people. But perhaps one day they will be restored to their former glory.”
I hope one day that Coop and I (did I just say Coop and I?) can visit some of these places for a closer look.
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Bella and Bill in Sandpoint, Idaho. Searching. Presumably for me. I will not be keeping this journal. I will be keeping an eye out for the Pod.
I handed the sheets to Coop. He put them into his backpack.
“What do you think, Lil Bro?”
“We have to find her,” I said.
Coop nodded.
by the time we drove away from Darien’s.
A 1996 Ford Taurus.
$1,500.
Cash.
I think Alex paid too much.
I’m sitting in the backseat with a flashlight writing this.
Darien threw in a set of snow chains in case we needed them going over the coast range. He also showed us how to put them on.
I wish he’d shown Alex how to drive. He hasn’t been behind the wheel of a car in decades.
I’m pretty sure we’re going to crash and die.
He’s swerving all over the road, driving about 40 miles an hour in a 55-mph speed zone. He’s leaning over the steering wheel as if he is having trouble seeing through the perfectly clear windshield.
“Road’s slick,” he says.
Then why is he the only one swerving? Why is everyone passing us?
Coop is sitting next to him.
He doesn’t appear to be upset about the swerving, or our speed. He rarely gets upset about anything, although while Alex was looking at the car with Darien, he admitted he was worried about Kate and wished she hadn’t gone after Bella and Bill on her own.
“The least she could have done was to come to the library and talk to us about it before she took off after them,” he said.
I reminded him that she was eager to catch the last bus and went so far as to pay a fortune to buy the ticket from the guy who gave us the note and the papers.
He gave me the grin. “You’re right, Meatloaf. I guess I just miss her. I’m the only member of our ragtag group who hasn’t seen her yet.”
“Maybe tonight,” I told him. “Maybe tomorrow.”
Or maybe never, the way Alex is driving.
I can see the headline in the Oregonian: “Three Found Dead in Ditch on Highway 26.”
I’m getting a little sick to my stomach bouncing around in the backseat and writing by flashlight. I haven’t lain down in almost a week.
I wonder what that would feel like.
I think I’d rather die dreaming than seeing the crash coming.
It was a little cramped in the backseat of the car, but I must have slept. Just before I closed my eyes I saw giant fir trees and swirling snow racing past the rear window at 40 miles an hour. When I opened my eyes I saw streetlights inching past at 20 miles an hour.
I sat up and looked at my watch.
5:34 a.m.
“Cannon Beach,” Coop said.
It had taken us a lot longer than two hours to get there.
There were shops on both sides of the street. Art galleries. A kite store. Clothing boutiques. Restaurants. A bookstore. A grocery store. All closed. No one on the foggy sidewalk. No cars driving on the wet street.
“Take a left up ahead,” Coop said.
Alex swung too wide, missing the curb by an inch.
I’d driven a car only a few times, but I was pretty sure I’d be better at it than he was.
“Stop up ahead.”
Alex did hit the curb this time. We were parked next to a bus shelter.
“This is the bus station?” I asked.
“Cannon Beach is too small to have a real station,” Coop answered.
He got out of the car.
Alex and I joined him. It felt good to stretch my legs. I couldn’t see a hundred feet in the cold fog. It was like standing in the middle of a rain cloud.
Coop pulled a flashlight out of his pocket, something he always carried with him. He flicked it on and started checking out the bus shelter, which consisted of three glass walls, a peaked roof, and a bench.
“What’s he doing?” Alex asked.
I shrugged and looked back toward the main part of town, wishing that the grocery store or one of the restaurants was open.
The thick fog lit up with alternating red and blue lights.
A cop car pulled up behind the Taurus. My first impulse was to run. Which is always my first impulse when I see a cop. I don’t know why. I’m not wanted for anything. I’ve never been wanted for anything.
“I’ll do the talking,” Alex said.
The cop got out of the patrol car. He turned on his flashlight.
Coop turned off his flashlight.
“What’s going on here?�
�
The cop pointed his flashlight at our faces.
The nameplate above his badge read JACKSON.
“My grandson lost his wallet somewhere between Manzanita and Portland,” Alex said. “Had some cash in it, but I’m more worried about the credit card. My credit card. I loaned it to him for his trip to the coast.”
“It’s not here,” Coop said. “Sorry, Gramps.” He stepped out of the shelter and walked over to us.
Jackson smiled when he shined the light on Coop, which wasn’t at all surprising, because this is what almost everyone does when they see Coop for the first time.
I have to say that the missing wallet / grandfather lie was brilliant. It explained why Coop was searching the bus shelter at five thirty in the morning, and it would head off the cop’s asking for Coop’s ID because it was lost somewhere between Portland and Manzanita.
It wouldn’t stop him from asking me for ID, but if he did, he was out of luck. As a kid I wasn’t really expected to carry ID, and I didn’t have any.
“Any chance anyone turned a wallet in at your station today?” Alex asked.
Jackson shook his head. “This is my second shift in a row. One-man operation today. I’m doing double duty. No wallet turned in.” He shined the light on our license plate. “Are you all from Portland?”
“We are now,” Alex answered. “Me and the wife moved out from the East Coast so we could be closer to our daughter and the grandsons here.”
Jackson stepped closer to the car and shined his light into the Taurus.
“What’s your next move?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
“The wallet.”
“Oh,” Alex said. “We’ll head down to Manzanita and see if he lost it there.”
Jackson looked at Coop. “Where were you staying down there?”
“I was camping at the state park.”
“Nehalem?”
“Yeah.”
“Kind of cold for camping.”
Coop grinned. “You aren’t kidding. It was freezing. I lasted only two days. I was going to stay the whole week.”
Jackson returned the grin. “You live at home with your mom?”
“And my dad, and my grandmother, and grandfather.” Coop looked at me. “And my little brother here.”
“Well, take it nice and slow,” Jackson said. “There are some icy spots south on 101. Don’t want you to end up in a ditch.”
“We will,” Alex said.
“You heading back today?” Jackson asked.
“After it gets light,” Alex answered. “Might take a stroll on the beach. Get these boys a serious breakfast.”
“There’s always a chance that someone found the wallet and hasn’t turned it in yet,” Jackson said. “Give me your license and I’ll punch it into our computer system with a note about the wallet.”
“It’s a New York license,” Alex said.
“No problem. Just give me your current address and phone number along with the license. I’ll send you the wallet if it shows up.”
I thought Alex had made his first mistake. I seriously doubted that he had a valid driver’s license. And even if he did, there was a bigger problem. If the license read Alex Dane, we were dead. On a cold and foggy morning, acting suspiciously, you don’t want to have the same last name as the most wanted person in the United States.
Alex pulled a thick wallet out of his back pocket. It took him a while to find his license among all the junk in the ancient leather.
Jackson shined his light on it, looked at Alex, and nodded. “And what’s your current address and phone number?”
To my surprise, Coop chimed in reciting Darien’s address and phone number as if he had lived there since he was born.
“I’ll just put the info into the computer. Back in a minute.” He climbed into the front seat of his cruiser. His face glowed pale blue from the dash computer screen.
“We’re fine,” Alex said under his breath. “I’m not wanted for anything. The ID is solid. I’ve been using the license since Larry shot me in the leg. The name on it is Jeremy Benson in case the cop asks. He’s being very polite about it, but he’s definitely checking us out. I think we’re okay. We haven’t done anything wrong. This is still a relatively free country.”
Jackson got out of the cruiser. He handed the license back to Alex. “I hope you find the missing wallet.”
“I hope so too.” Alex stuffed the license back into his wallet.
“Oh, one more thing,” Jackson said. “I noticed your vehicle isn’t registered to you.”
“I know,” Alex said easily, as if he had anticipated the question. “It belongs to Darien Colgate. He rents the lower half of my daughter’s house. He’s been trying to get me to buy it off him for months. Borrowed it to see how it drives.”
“How does it drive?” Jackson asked.
Alex smiled. “Better than it looks. Did well going over the mountains.”
“Nice meeting you. You might try eating at the Bunk House Restaurant, just south of Manzanita on the main highway. They have a good breakfast.”
“Thanks for the tip,” Alex said.
We climbed back into the car. Jackson got into his cruiser and shut off the flashing lights.
Alex started the car. “Told you he was checking us out.”
“You might want to concentrate on keeping the car on the road,” I said.
“Backseat driver!” Alex snarled.
Coop and I burst out laughing. A second later Alex joined in.
Jackson tailed us all the way up to Highway 101, where he headed north and we headed south. Alex didn’t swerve once on the way out of town, although he was going only 20 miles an hour.
About five miles south of Cannon Beach, Coop said, “Kate left us a note.” He took a scrap of paper out of his pocket.
“Where did you find it?” I asked.
“In the bus shelter.”
FIGURED YOU’D FOLLOW …
If you get this, I’m headed to Manzanita with a girl I met on the bus. She left her car in Cannon Beach and gave me a ride to Manzanita. Her parents own the Ocean Inn, 32 Laneda Ave. She offered to let me stay there for cash under the table. Not sure what room I’ll be in, but there are only ten units. It’s not far from Nehalem Bay State Park. If I’m not at the inn I’ll be at the park.
Kate
“How’d you know she’d leave a note in the bus shelter?”
“When I was in the Deep she told me some things about how the Pod operated when they were above. When they got separated they left notes for each other in what she called logical drops, which I guess are places along their route that make sense. The bus shelter was the logical place.”
“If we followed her,” I pointed out.
“What else would we have done?” Coop asked.
I thought of a dozen other things we could have done, but I let it go. Coop’s logic was not like other people’s logic.
We drove into the sleepy little town of Manzanita. It looked to be a quarter the size of Cannon Beach and a lot less commercial.
The Ocean Inn was right on the beach. We pulled into the parking lot next to the only car there, which had to belong to the girl who had driven Kate there.
“How do we find out what room she’s in?” I asked. “I doubt the office is open yet.”
Coop got out of the car and once again turned on his flashlight. He shined it on the car we were parked next to. I hoped a cop didn’t see him. A couple of seconds later he popped his head back into our car.
“Room eight.”
I didn’t want to ask, but I couldn’t help myself. “Okay, how do you know that?”
He held up another piece of paper. “Another note. Stuck under the windshield wiper.”
11:00 p.m…. Decided to bicycle over to the park to see what’s going on. It’s not far. Don’t know how you got down here, but if you’re on foot the hotel has free bicycles outside the office. They’re locked. The combination is 333. Or you can jus
t wait in #8 for me to come back.
Kate
We found room number eight.
Coop was poised to knock on the door but changed his mind and tried the handle. It wasn’t locked.
“Kate?” he whispered.
No answer.
“Kate?”
He fumbled inside the door for a light switch and flipped it on.
The room was empty.
I looked at my watch. 6:17. She had been gone for more than seven hours.
I looked at the bed, wishing I could flop down on it and sleep for three days. The bathroom light was on. Inside was a shower, but I knew I wouldn’t be using it, or the bed.
“Let’s go,” Alex said.
“Maybe we should leave her a note,” I suggested.
“She’ll know we were here because her note is gone. The trick to disappearing is to stay invisible. Leave no trail. You can’t be followed if no one knows you were there.”
It took us a while, and several wrong turns, to find the sign for Nehalem Bay State Park. Coop had been there only once, and someone else had been driving because Coop had no idea how to drive a car, and probably never would.
Nobody said a word about how long Kate had been gone, but I knew Coop and Alex were as worried as I was.
A cold rain fell. The windshield wipers were on high. The defrost fan was blowing full blast, barely able to clear the condensation.
Alex pulled to the side of the road just past the park’s unmanned entrance booth. He turned off the headlights but kept the windshield wipers and fan on. It smelled kind of musty inside the car.
Sweat.
Nerves.
Lack of showers.
The windows began to fog despite the fan.
“I think we should go in on foot from here,” Alex said. “Can’t see without the headlights, and the headlights would give us away.”
“Hand me my pack,” Coop said.
We pulled out our rain jackets and put them on.
“Do you have flashlights?” Coop asked.
I did. Alex didn’t. Coop gave him one. He had plenty to spare.
“Wish I had a tuna sandwich,” Coop said, opening his door.