by David Jurk
I waved to her and walked out into the sunshine, wondering where she’d heard that phrase, here in land locked Iowa. Sailor; a relentless word. It drove the good feeling from the coffee shop right out of me. I’d never claimed to be a sailor, had I? I never called myself one, not even to Rachel. I just said I wanted to be one and I built a sailboat. That’s it, no pretensions.
As I walked to the truck under the relentlessly sparkling sky, it did occur to me that intentional or not, being a sailor was surely down the road I was on. It was exactly what the promise to Rachel had meant. Sure, the boat needed to get out of the fucking barn and actually find water, but it hadn’t struck me until just that moment that what I’d really promised her was to become a sailor. The realization of it filled me with dread.
It took a while to catch up to the truck; they seemed to have picked up the pace a bit in my absence; maybe Mitch thought he’d outrun me. Fat chance, they were hardly managing a hundred kilometers an hour. Settling back into my spot behind them, we made our way ever westward, stopping with dusk for dinner. Or, more accurately, they stopped, and I followed them.
They chose a truck plaza – what else? - and went into a restaurant without so much as a backward glance. Fine – there were fast food places all over the place so I bought a nameless, tasteless burger and sat in the pickup and ate it. In an hour, they were back; there was no acknowledgement and they got into the truck and pulled out. I fell in behind them, hoping it’d be dark soon.
By the time they pulled off the highway again, we were well into Nebraska, and I dutifully followed them to a motel outside Ogallala. Yes, there’s a room, the fat woman behind the counter told me, bored and uncaring. Neither Mitch nor what’s his name said a word to me, though I stood right next to them, waiting my turn while they registered.
In the room, I thought of the flask of Irish Whiskey in my backpack, questioned the wisdom of it for all of two seconds, then got up and pulled it free. The whisky was a balm; the miles and the hours melting slowly into a pleasant and familiar obscurity. I called for the room AI to turn on the television; got Google News, and left it there, not really attending to it, hardly hearing the voices.
In the background, some mention of a nova that would be visible in the sky for months; a binary star that had exploded into a red nimbus, appearing as large in the sky as a nearby planet. I put the flask away and my eyes began refusing to stay open. The news shifted to a flu outbreak in China, but I was fading, and called out TV Off and before I could order the room light off as well, I was out.
CHAPTER FIVE
I WAS OUT of the room by dawn, emerging into a dim, cold morning, the sun little more than a faint promise on the horizon. I grabbed a sweater out of the pickup, noticing the flatbed parked lengthwise along one side of the parking lot, taking up the entire row of parking spaces. I walked over to it, circling it, letting my hand trace the old familiar feel of the hulls, now crusty with filth from the road. It hadn’t occurred to me that they’d get grimy like this; there was something disquieting about it, disrespectful, and I was angry with myself for not paying the extra cost of shrink wrapping.
As I stood there, Mitch and what’s-his-name walked out with a stiff-legged, rolling walk as if they’d just come in from rounding up cattle. Or maybe they were just stoned. They approached me like old friends, chattering on about the long drive and insistent that they’d reach Utah before stopping for the night. They wanted to get as far west as St. George, which seemed a ridiculous distance to try to cover.
What’s his name had a shirt on with the trucking company logo on the back and Ron over the front pocket. So that solves that I thought, and called him Ron, but he laughed and said it wasn’t his shirt. His name was Lucas, but he’d prefer Luke. Christ almighty; I went back to thinking of him as what’s-his-name.
“Did you see the thing about the Chinese?” Mitch asked.
“Something, I guess,” I said, trying to remember.
He was excited. “Kind of crazy, right? They’re saying, like, couple hundred thousand people dead. Guess it’s contagious as all fuck, but it’s weird, right? So, instead of being, like, the normal flu where you get chills and puke and all that, you get, like, instant pneumonia, then you just fucking die, right?”
Obviously, he was stoned as hell, or more likely just stupid. Two hundred thousand dead?
“The bad part,” he continued, “is that you don’t know you’re sick until you’re, like, practically dead so in the meantime, you’re spreading that shit like mad.”
“Yeah,” I said. I had no idea whatsoever what he was talking about.
He looked at me as if he’d expected more. “That’s some scary shit, man.” He pulled a joint from his breast pocket, slowly lit it. “But, like, who cares? Just chinks, right?” He held the joint out to me.
I shook my head, staring at him in silence. Don’t say it, I told myself; he’s got your boat.
He passed the joint to Ron-Lucas-Luke. “Guess we better get to it, then.”
They turned toward the cab of the truck. I thought of the two years I’d spent building the boat they were hauling, pot smoke trailing behind them.
“Drive safe,” I called. No answer.
I waited in the pickup while they did whatever it is they needed to do to get underway; a process that took fifteen full minutes. I could see smoke wafting out the driver’s side window from time to time.
I busied myself checking the route on my phone. We were so close to the Colorado state line, we’d be there in minutes – that is, if we ever actually got moving. I drilled down into the map; once past the Denver megalopolis we’d be in the Rockies.
Zooming in, attractions began popping up, projected in 3D, obscuring the map. I began to command them removed when one caught my eye; Hanging Lake. Something about the name held me so I asked for details. The images projected were of a beautiful crystalline lake hanging literally on the edge of a cliff. It appeared jewel-like, a perfect sapphire nestled in the granite; so deeply ultramarine blue it seemed painted onto the landscape. The urge to have an itinerary of my own, to have a goal other than following these men was overwhelming, irresistible. Hanging Lake sounded fine, as if I’d been planning to stop all along. It just felt right.
The sound of an electro-diesel moaning invaded the truck and I looked up to see the flat bed crawling its way out of the parking lot. Jesus, I thought, finally. Within a few minutes, we were back on the interstate, westbound for Colorado.
We dropped south, off route eighty, onto seventy-six for Denver, and arrived at exactly the wrong time and crawled, stop and go, through commuter traffic that seemed never to end. For most of the mass of drivers, this meant little more than letting their cars handle the traffic while they slept or read. For me, with the ancient Tacoma and a manual transmission, it meant hours of unrelenting shifting. After what seemed forever, we finally picked up route seventy and traffic thinned as we entered the mountains. The truck barely managed ninety kilometers an hour up the grades, and despite the pot, Mitch seemed to be driving conservatively. After the hours of stop and go, the open freeway was irresistible, and I swung out and around them and in short order they were lost in the terrain behind me.
It was a beautiful, crisp day; the sky the sort of cerulean blue you only see in the mountains and the satisfaction I’d felt at making the decision to follow this impulse grew to the point that I felt very light, almost happy. I had reached the fullness of the mountains now and as I rounded one sweeping turn after another the true magic of the Rockies spread before me, wave after wave of reticulated ridges fanning out unbroken to the horizon.
When I was in college, it had been the mountains that captured my soul. I lived for the thrill of rock climbing and the escape into the wilderness; so soul-satisfying that I have never quite understood why I hadn’t made my life there. What had led me elsewhere? Something I couldn’t remember anymore – I just left, I suppose; surrendered to some impulse, some distraction, and that was that. Wasn’t that how li
ves were formed – a small set of choices that seemed meaningless at the time that eventually took you to a place you never planned on?
I was so enthralled with the scenery around me I nearly missed the exit - at the last possible moment catching a glimpse of the sign and standing on the brakes. I fishtailed onto the exit ramp, barely in control and came to a shaky stop at the intersection, thankful no one was there to witness it.
The road signs to the lake trail head were impossible to miss, and in five minutes I arrived at the parking lot and climbed out of the pickup. The air was considerably warmer than in Ogallala, despite the altitude, but still I put a jacket on over my sweater before starting up the trail. I’d gone no more than a hundred meters when I realized I was going to get more exercise than I bargained for and took it back off. The trail was steep, and rocky, and in the shadows the boulders I was trying to use for footing were slippery. The route wound its way through countless switchbacks and when I stopped to catch my breath, deep in a bowl of stunted trees, I was disappointed to find no view at all. I briefly considered turning back, but the image of the lake compelled me onward.
As I rounded the last switchback, what opened before me was so stunning that the effort of the long ascent fell from me completely. There was a swath of green hillside, ramping up sharply to a small lake that held a depth of blueness that shamed the images I’d seen earlier that morning. Its far edge dropped into a dizzying infinity against the horizon. I stood unblinking in the bright sun, drawing in great breaths, the view simply overwhelming my eyes.
A boardwalk had been built around the perimeter of the lake and I walked it all the way around, moving slowly, unable to tear my eyes from the water. I was alone, grateful for the solitude, and finally sank down onto one of the benches that had been placed along the boardwalk, leaning back in the warm sun.
Perhaps it was the climb, or maybe the sudden lethargy that came over me was triggered by the warmth enveloping me. Whatever it was, within seconds, I felt so sleepy it was as though I were paralyzed and without resistance, my eyes fell shut. Still, I wasn’t asleep; I was quite certain of that. Rather, I felt that I’d slid into a half-consciousness, not fully awake but very much aware of where I was, aware of the light from the sun on my face, the warmth.
And, just like that, Rachel was there.
My eyes were closed, so it must have been that I felt her arrive. When I opened them, she was simply there, sitting on the bench next to me. I wasn’t shocked or surprised in any way; seeing her seemed completely normal, as if she’d been away on an errand and now was back. There was neither sorrow nor a sense of elation – no, it was the most normal thing in the world to simply be sitting there with her. It’s not as if I’d forgotten she was dead; it was as though death were something trivial, like her height or her shoe size. She was dressed in her old jeans and favorite sweater, and we sat comfortably, warm and relaxed; there was no hurry about anything, no pressure. I glanced over at her face, looking at her like I’ve always looked at her. My heart was full, so very full.
“Hey, Raich,” I said, finally. “How’s it going?”
“Good,” she replied. Her eyes were the same; as blue as this lake. Not true; they were bluer. She smiled at me. “Everything’s really good.”
“Pretty up here, isn’t it?” I nodded toward the endlessness of the mountains, the lake suspended against the sky.
“It’s just lovely,” she sighed, “a truly special place.”
She looked at me, looked into me like she always could. The black place inside me just disappeared, as if it had never been there. In its place was lightness, a feeling that everything had been set right. That feeling of rightness was so profound, so total, that there were no words for it. But I was transformed; the earth had been tilted on its axis and now it was aligned properly again, I was back to being me. Rachel was here.
We sat quietly. I could feel her body against me, warm and vital; the energy and lightness she carried radiated into me. The sun shone down on us, bright white and focused like a spotlight. We sat in this light for some interminable time, happy to be silent, happy to be with each other. Maybe we were like that for a minute or maybe it was hours; time seemed completely without relevance. Every part of my being wanted nothing more, absolutely nothing. I was where I should be, forever. I was complete, whole.
At some point, she turned to me, lazily, her smile warm and loving.
“You’ve gotten the boat out of the barn,” she said. Her voice was light and happy; I heard the approval in it, heard her pride in me, and the joy that washed over me to have not disappointed her was like no feeling I’d ever had in my life.
“Yep,” I said, fighting tears, “she’s out.” I looked at her, at those bluest, bluest eyes and I thought of where we sat, not in Michigan, but here in Colorado. “The farm’s gone, though, Raich.”
“I know,” she said, smiling. “It was a wonderful place, wasn’t it? When we needed it, we had it.” There was no sadness in her voice and she watched me, light dancing in her eyes. “Now we don’t need it anymore.”
Of course, I thought. It’s as simple as that.
We sat bathed in a comfortable silence. In a moment she spoke, her voice languid, velvet with sun, full of the promise of her love.
“So, where do you think it should be?” I knew immediately what she was after.
“Well,” I said, pausing to collect my thoughts, “probably one of the marinas along Point Loma. I think there are lots of multihulls along that stretch, so they should have the equipment to handle a trimaran.”
She nodded approvingly. “Shelter Island would be a good choice.”
“You think that’s the one?” I asked. “They’re so huge. I’m kind of worried about handling her alone with all those other boats around.”
She laid her hand on my knee, her touch what I imagined the hand of god would feel like if there were a hand of god. “You’ll be fine,” she assured me. “Don’t worry. When you get there, you’ll see – it’ll seem scary until you do it.”
“Easy for you to say,” I teased, and she laughed.
“You’re the sailor man,” she said softly and something inside me twisted.
“I know you think so. But I’m not, Raich. I don’t know what I’m doing.”
She didn’t answer, and I looked up at her, found her barely managing to suppress her laughter, her eyes sparkling with it, and it made me laugh, too. Inside, the twisted thing unwound, and it all suddenly seemed ridiculously simple. Hell, if I could build a twelve-meter boat for Christ’s sake, I sure should be able to figure out how to sail her, right? How hard could it be? All sorts of people did it. Kids did it.
She yawned sleepily beside me, then rested her head on my shoulder, and it came to me with perfect clarity, perfect certainty, that she knew exactly what I was thinking and feeling. She was there with me, inside my head.
“You’re doing this, aren’t you?” I asked. “Making me feel better.”
She didn’t answer, and we sat like that a while, her head against me, mine tilted against her. I could smell her hair. The fragrance was rapturous, and I wondered stupidly if she were still using the same shampoo. The thought was so absurd I laughed.
“Owen, love,” she said softly after a while. “You have to go.” Again, I knew what she meant.
“But I am, Raich. I am.”
“Not just to San Diego.”
I raised my head, turned to look at her. “Where else would I go?”
“Out,” she said, evenly. “Get out into blue water and head west across the Pacific. You mustn’t wait, you can’t hang about the marina or even near the coast. There won’t be time to wait, there won’t be time for you to get as comfortable as you’d really like to.” She paused and suddenly there was a shadow, an intrusion into this quiet sunlit place.
“Bad things are going to happen, love,” she said, very softly. “You’ll need to be at sea.” She took my hand; her fingers were so warm, so supple and sensual. It was so good
to feel them again, to feel her hand. I rubbed my thumb over her wedding band, turning it round her finger; round and round.
“What’s going to happen?” I asked. Sitting with her, I had no fear, just curiosity.
She didn’t answer and after a moment I lifted her hand to my lips and kissed her fingers, held them against my cheek, willing the warmth of her skin to be with me forever.
“My love,” she said, and her voice was so soft and quiet that I heard it only in my thoughts. She didn’t say anything more; I felt her slipping away, merging with the sunshine. For a lingering moment, she was both the familiar body next to me and the warmth of the sun on my face, and then I looked for her, but she was gone.
CHAPTER SIX
I LAID SPRAWLED out on the bench, unwilling – perhaps unable – to move. The awareness of her, the memory of her face, her touch, the sound of her voice – left me paralyzed with a sense of hollow loss. She was like a drug to me, suddenly out of reach, absent from the world,
Shadows from the trees on the hillside had grown long, covering me and adding to the pervading sense of gloom. Beyond the reach of the them, the sun was still brilliant, but seemed much lower in the sky. Laying there in the shadows, the cold began seeping into me and the need for warmth drove me to rouse myself and put on my jacket.
I kept searching for some evidence of her, some echo of the luminescence of her, but all trace of her presence was gone, and the lake and vista that had seemed so timelessly beautiful now appeared pale, devoid of life.
I turned to leave, but a chill along my neck pulled me back around to take one last look at the lake and the sky beyond, and as I did my eye caught a red orb low in the cloudless sky, dim but unmistakable. It must be the nova, I thought, and the timing of it grated on me; it seemed an obscene intrusion here in this place where Rachel had been. I felt myself shivering with the cold.