Cascadia

by H W Buzz Bernard

  As they waited in line for a tuna fish sandwich and a Coke, Rob asked Shack what his plans were.

  “Since there probably isn’t much I can do here for a while, I’m going in search of my daughter . . . our daughter, Alex’s and mine. She is, was, attending a university in Salem.”

  “A daughter?” Rob failed to hide his surprise. “You never mentioned that before.”

  “Part of the three-beer story,” he said.

  “Yeah? When do I get to hear it?”

  “After I get my life sorted out. What about you? Where do you go now?”

  “I’ll probably throw some blankets on the floor and bed down in the hospital tonight, then try to make my way home on foot tomorrow, if I can find some shoes.”

  “Where’s home?”

  “Lake Oswego, a suburb about seven or eight miles south of here. I should be able to make it in a day.”

  A rumble and rattle rippled through the parking lot. Most people standing in line knelt in place. A few screamed. Nobody panicked. Veterans now, or maybe just too exhausted, both mentally and physically, to give a damn anymore.

  “Another aftershock,” Rob said. “They could go on for days.”

  They reached the Red Cross food service truck and received their handout.

  Shack examined the sandwich. “At least it’s not an MRE.”

  “MRE?”

  “Meals Ready to Eat in military lingo. Or more popularly, Meals Rejected by Everyone. It’s the armed forces’ answer to a weight-loss program.”

  For the first time that day, Rob laughed.

  They seated themselves on a toppled light pole in the parking lot and gobbled their sandwiches along with a bag of chips and a peanut butter cookie.

  As they ate, Shack said, “When everything settles down, how do I get in touch with you?”

  Rob reached into his pants pocket, found his wallet, and dug out a soggy business card.

  “My email and cell phone are on there,” he said. He handed the card to Shack. “It may be several weeks before you can get through, though.”

  Shack studied the card. “Yeah, I know. But I’ll be in the area for a long time. Alex isn’t going on this journey by herself, although she doesn’t know it yet.” He flashed Rob an inscrutable grin, and Rob wondered if three beers would be enough to handle the story he hoped to hear someday.

  “Look,” Rob said, “if you need a place to stay, get in touch with me or make your way to Lake Oswego. Well, that’s on the assumption my place survived, I guess.”

  Sirens continued to warble through the damaged streets. Overhead, streamers of black smoke mingled with puffy, white cumulus. In the parking lot, more and more people, many looking like shell-shocked combat troops, wandered into the medical center.

  Shack finished his meal and dumped the wrappers into a trash bin. “Well, I suspect I’ve got some details to take care of inside.”

  He spread his arms and approached Rob. “Man hug,” he said, his voice still raspy. “But not too hard. Ribs, remember?”

  They embraced briefly and stepped apart. To Rob’s surprise, it hadn’t felt awkward.

  “Thanks for all you did, brother,” Shack said. “Sorry about your airplane.”

  “Battle damage, isn’t that what you guys call it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You thinking about going back to Atlanta anytime soon? Didn’t you say that’s where you’re from?”

  Shack seemed to stare into the middle distance, perhaps searching for an avatar of himself, and didn’t answer immediately. Finally, he said, “I’m an Oregonian now.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Rio

  Portland, Oregon

  Wednesday, August 19

  SHACK FOLLOWED his daughter, Skylar, into Alex’s room at RIO, the Rehabilitation Institute of Oregon located in the Good Samaritan Medical Center. After tracking Skylar down, a process that had taken several weeks, Shack and she had returned to Portland where they learned Alex had been moved to RIO. With phone service at last partially restored, they’d been able to call Good Sam’s and make arrangements for a visit.

  Skylar, sobbing—a reflection of relief more than anything, Shack judged—darted to her mother’s bed and fell into her arms. The two embraced for a long time, whispering to one another. He stood by silently, watching mother and daughter, marveling at how much Skylar looked like her mother: tall, shapely, exquisite features, but with blond, not dark, hair. Apparently her hair color had been the only thing she’d inherited from him. Probably a good thing.

  Alex appeared pale and drawn. Small wonder. At the same time, she seemed more beautiful than ever, at least to Shack.

  The starkness of the room with only a bed, dresser, beside table, and parking space for a wheelchair, struck him as depressing. Perhaps that was the least of the concerns of those who spent time here, however.

  Skylar at last broke the hug with her mother, backed away, and turned toward Shack. “Your turn,” she said, dabbing at her red eyes with a Kleenex.

  Shack stepped to Alex, bent over her, and kissed her on the lips. “You look great.”

  “Bullshit,” she whispered.

  “You won’t ever agree with me, will you?”

  She smiled. “Maybe I need to change my ways.”

  “You think? Anyhow, it’s wonderful to see you,” he said, a tiny catch in his throat.

  “I’m a cripple now, you know.”

  “You could have been just a memory.”

  She closed her eyes. “Yes. It might have been better if I—”

  “Cut it out,” Shack snapped. “Don’t go all ‘woe is me’ on me now. You’ve . . . well, we’ve . . . come through too much.”

  She opened her eyes, reached out, and grasped his hand. “Yes, I know. You and your pilot friend. What was his name?”

  “Rob.”

  “Yeah. I heard about your adventures. Mine, too, I guess. How you got me out of Manzanita, flew me to Portland, crashed in the river.”

  “Which leads me to something I want to tell you. Do you recall the old saying that if you save someone’s life, you’re forever responsible for it?”

  “Who said that?” She released his hand.

  “It might be an old Chinese proverb, or maybe Polish. I don’t know.”

  She closed her eyes again and tipped her head back in her pillow. “Don’t tell me you’re going to use that as an excuse to stay with me.” A tinge of hardness coated her words.

  “I don’t need an excuse,” he said softly.

  She turned her head and stared at him. “Maybe you should rethink that. Look, if you’re feeling guilty because you believe your actions might somehow have dictated my exodus to Oregon where I ended up as a victim of a megaquake, get over it. I made my own decision, executed it, and lived with it. I couldn’t have been happier here. So don’t go falling on your emotional sword for me.”

  He leaned in close to her. “I wouldn’t think of it.”

  A nurse entered the room and shooed Shack and Skylar out temporarily while she checked Alex’s vital signs and took care of the bedpan.

  After she’d finished, Shack and Skylar returned.

  Alex sat propped up in bed. “So,” she said, “tell me how your first meeting went.”

  Skylar looked at Shack, Shack at her.

  “Go ahead,” Skylar said.

  “Well, it took quite some time, given the circumstances, for me to find her. But I finally located her in one of those camps . . . what are we supposed to call them?”

  “Full-Service Temporary Lodging Villages,” Skylar said, “courtesy of the U. S. government.”

  “Yeah, right. She was stuck in a ratty house trailer in a refugee camp.” He shifted his gaze to Alex. “She didn’t know what had happened
to you.”

  “And I sure as hell didn’t believe him when he got around to telling me he was my father,” Skylar added.

  “That took some convincing,” Shack said. “I had to answer a lot of, well, personal questions about our relationship. Then even after she accepted I might really be her dad, she decided I was a bastard for never contacting her, even though I told her I never even knew she existed before I went to Manzanita.” He paused. “But I guess I was still a bastard.”

  Neither Skylar nor Alex disagreed, he noted, but he understood where their attitudes came from.

  “So after that?” Alex asked.

  “We signed up for one of those civilian volunteer teams that were springing up all over the place,” Skylar said. “We requested Manzanita and got bussed there after about a week or so. It gave us a chance to see what we could salvage from your house and office.”

  “Then we helped with general cleanup and salvage work,” Shack said. “Tiring but rewarding.”

  “Where did you live?”

  “In a camp the Army set up,” Shack said. “Tents, but they were warm and dry and comfortable. It gave us a chance to”—he looked at Skylar—“bond, I guess is the right word.”

  Skylar smiled. “A work in progress.”

  “Isn’t everything,” Alex said, her voice barely above a whisper.

  “We’ll make it.” Shack said.

  “So what’s next?” Alex looked from Shack to Skylar.

  “Back to Manzanita,” Shack said, “to continue to help with the cleanup. And . . . should I tell her, Sky?”

  Skylar nodded.

  “We’re going to build a house.”

  “We?” Alex said.

  “Skylar and me,” Shack answered. “We’ve already sketched out a design for a home that will accommodate your . . . limitations, for as long as you have them.”

  “I plan on living there, Mom,” Skylar said. “I can help you and maybe even assist in getting your law practice up and running again; at least as soon as I pass the bar.”

  “How about you?” Alex said, fixing her gaze on Shack.

  He stared out the room’s window into the intense blue sky of a hot August afternoon. “That’ll be up to you,” he said.

  “I see.”

  The nurse reappeared. “Well, I need the patient for a little while. She’s got a session scheduled with our Zero-G Gait and Balance System.”

  “So you expect her to be able to walk again?” Shack said.

  “She wouldn’t be the first.”

  He moved closer to the nurse. “Honestly, what are her odds?” He kept his voice low.

  “Fifty-fifty.” She smiled. “Either she will or she won’t. Truthfully, we don’t know. But I do know it’s often not the medical aspects that are the most important factors. It’s the psychological ones. A positive attitude, determination, and the will to work your butt off.”

  “She’ll do well then,” Shack said.

  Shack, Alex, and Skylar said their goodbyes and established a time for their next visit. Shack and Skylar stepped into the hallway, but Shack halted and said, “Hold it a minute.” He returned to the doorway and stuck his head back into Alex’s room.

  “I just remembered something,” he said. “Part of the old Chinese or Polish proverb, or whatever the hell it is.”

  “Yes?”

  “My responsibility to you, the part about being forever responsible for your life, is fulfilled if you save my life.”

  “Then I’m afraid you’re stuck with me forever.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “I can’t save your life.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong. You already have.” He shut the door, took his daughter’s hand, and headed toward the lobby. Skylar leaned her head against his shoulder.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Home

  Lake Oswego

  Monday, November 9

  RAIN HAMMERED against the windows of Rob’s house in wind-driven fury as the first powerful Pacific storm of the autumn slammed into the Pacific Northwest. He hoped the blue tarpaulin draped over his roof would hold. So far, so good. He guessed that if he could see a view of his neighborhood from a drone, it would look more like an azure tent city than an affluent suburb. Perhaps by spring the overloaded roofing contractors would be caught up on their work.

  In truth, he’d been lucky. His house had weathered the megaquake, suffering only minor damage, “minor” being a relative term. The house had shifted slightly on its foundation, but remained standing, albeit in a fashion that made it appear in the early stages of osteoporosis. Still, it remained habitable. When it might be repaired, he had no idea. In the meantime, he and his family would continue to live in the “Listing House by the Lake.”

  “Easy to deliver dinners,” Rob had told Deb. “Just set the plates on the kitchen counter and they’ll slide toward the dining room.”

  “And no need to worry about privacy here,” she’d added. “Most of the doors are wedged open.”

  Although Rob and she had found humor in that, Tim and Maria hadn’t. Teenagers don’t appreciate being trapped in a home where they can’t sequester themselves in their bedroom burrows. And they certainly would remain trapped through the autumn, since virtually all of the schools west of the Cascades had shuttered their damaged facilities until after the first of the year.

  Prior to returning home, Timothy had had his own adventure. He’d remained in Manzanita for almost a month with Lewis after Rob had taken off with Shack and Alex on their “life flight.” Although Lewis’s home had been destroyed by the tsunami, he’d taken Tim under his wing. They’d found shelter in the basement of a local church, and kept themselves busy helping with cleanup and recovery operations. They’d often put in sixteen-hour days.

  Tim had finally hitched a ride back to Portland after Highway 26 over the Coast Range had been repaired and reopened. It had been an agonizingly slow trip with only one lane open in long stretches.

  With both of his children home safe, Rob tolerated their nearly constant whining and bellyaching about their “incarceration.” Even that had diminished after he explained to them what the alternative could have been: being squeezed into a FEMA trailer or government yurt—yurts only in Oregon, he imagined—in a so-called temporary settlement. Temporary, he explained, could mean years for some people, if the experiences in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans offered any guide.

  Rain continued to machine-gun against the window in Rob’s study. He guessed the big Honda portable generator he’d purchased long before the quake would come in handy again. Even after power had been restored post-quake to Lake Oswego, after over two weeks without, brownouts had established themselves as a way of life. Now, the gale-force winds howling outside would only exacerbate the problem.

  As he tapped on his computer keyboard, his cell phone rang.

  “This is Rob,” he said, answering it.

  “Hey, buddy, how’re they hangin’?”

  Because of its unique cadence, Rob instantly recognized Shack’s voice.

  “Shack! What the hell? I thought you’d dropped off the face of the Earth. After we parted ways in Portland, nothing.”

  “I’m sorry, partner. Things were kind of stressful for a long time.”

  “I know. For all of us. So where are you?”

  “Manzanita.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, it seems almost like home to me. Like I told you at the medical center, I’m an Oregonian now.”

  Rob pushed away from his desk and leaned back in his chair. “Guess you’d better bring me up to date.”

  Shack did, telling him about tracking down Skylar, their reunion with Alex at RIO, their plans to build a home in Manzanita.

  Rob stood and walked to the
rain-splattered window and looked out. Firs and spruce whipped back and forth in the wind. Soggy brown and gold leaves, ripped from deciduous trees, tumbled through the air in short flights to landings on puddled streets and saturated lawns.

  “So how’s Alex doing?” Rob asked.

  “She’s still in rehab, but she’s been moved up to Seattle to the University of Washington Medical Center. I think it’s called the Northwest Regional Spinal Cord Injury System. It’s considered one of the tops in the country.”

  “Is she making progress?” The question came with a modicum of trepidation.

  “Actually, yes. I just learned a few days ago that she took a couple of steps,” Shack’s voice cracked with emotion, “on her own while wearing a harness.”

  “That’s great, Shack. Give her my best next time you talk to her.”

  “I will.”

  The lights in the study flickered. “Hold on,” Rob said to Shack, and called for Tim to make sure the generator was ready to go, if needed.

  “Stormy there, too, I guess?” Shack said.

  “Welcome to winter in Oregon.”

  “So I’ve heard. Anyhow, I want you and your family to come visit when we get the house finished and Alex moved in.”

  “Love it. So you’re going to be staying with them, too?”

  A brief silence ensued, except for the steady beat of the rain.

  “That’s still a TBD, I guess,” Shack answered. He fell silent, then changed the subject. “So, your plane. What’s up with it?”

  “Still on the bottom of the Willamette. Kind of low priority to be dredged up.”

  “Insurance?”

  “Sure. But you know insurance companies. Always glad to take your money. Always eager to keep it.”

  “What’s the hang up?”

  “Not an accident, they say. I deliberately crashed it into the river.”

  “Are you shitting me?” Shack’s voice rose an octave. “They didn’t even consider the circumstances. Give me their fucking phone number. I’ll call and set them straight myself.”