Miracle Beach (23 page)

The site was in the shape of a keyhole that had been cut into the thick brush. Jack couldn’t see the other campsites except for the brief shadow of a fire flickering here and there, and he couldn’t hear the other campers. When Sophie had suggested this place, he was skeptical. Most campgrounds in Wisconsin were fields packed tight with travel campers, littered with clotheslines, and teeming with the sounds of drunken parents and screaming kids. They were like shantytowns or tenement villages. He hadn’t ever understood the desire to camp like that, what the point of it was.

Here, they had to keep all food locked in the car or away from the tents, and keep a “clean” campground so as not to attract bears or cougars. Cutting wood from the surrounding rain forest was prohibited, and campfires were limited to the tiny, steel-lined fire pit toward the rear of the keyhole. Jack could hear scurrying in the woods behind him and the continual crashing of surf on the beach below.

They set up two tents: a tattered blue one-person, triangleshaped tent and, on the other side of the keyhole, a newer yellow three-person dome tent with a “foyer,” as Sophie called it. Sophie had decided that having a “girls’ ” and “boy’s” tent would be best—the most proper option. Jack was in no mood to argue.

It was obvious that Sophie wasn’t new to this. She had the essential gear, and just enough of it. Despite the looks of the station wagon, he realized there had been little overpacking, no excess. She had thought to bring kindling, a hatchet, tarps, rope, a small tin coffeepot, and a frying pan. Wide, shallow mugs would serve double duty as bowls or plates, and smaller-than-average forks hung from the handles, fastened by leather strings that had grown smooth, almost slick, with time and use. Those things, according to Sophie, were all they needed. Pretty much anything else could be skewered on a stick for cooking.

In the time that it took Jack to hang two tarps, one on either side, Sophie had started a fire, erected a tent under each tarp, and bedded them both. She had turned the station wagon around and backed down the short, narrow “driveway” to their campsite, then organized the coolers and food to be within easy reach of the rear window. Some people brought footlockers for their food, but Sophie claimed this was too dangerous. Besides, she said, there was not much an old bear could do to that car that hadn’t been done to it already.

Jack pulled a folding chair close to the fire. The temperature at night dipped more sharply here than in Campbell River. Sophie was right that he wouldn’t need much sunscreen. It seemed as though the wind gained ferocity with every mile it covered across the vast, empty expanse of the Pacific Ocean, hitting the west coast of Vancouver Island in a constant scream. Even if the sun decided to make an appearance during the day, Jack didn’t think he’d be stripping down to much less than a sweatshirt. He was chilled to the bone, and even though the fire’s heat seared his skin, it felt good.

He watched all but Sophie’s legs disappear into the backseat of the car and reemerge with a bundled, fast-asleep Glory. He saw Sophie stare down at the girl and bury her lips in Glory’s tousled curls. Only as Sophie struggled to get Glory into the yellow tent without waking her did Jack realize that maybe he should’ve offered to help.

“Wanna beer?” Sophie whispered, zipping the tent behind her.

Jack smiled, nodded.

Sophie grabbed two Kokanees, cracked one, and handed it to Jack. She pulled another folding chair to his side of the fire, opened her own beer, and took a long swig.

“Didn’t think you were a beer drinker,” Jack said.

Sophie shook her head. “Only when I camp.”

“Why’s that?” Jack asked. He’d never met a woman with so many quirks.

“Don’t know,” said Sophie. “Just always been that way.”

They fell to silence then, listening instead to the fire’s monologue of sputter and sizzle. A million and one worries should have been clamoring through Jack’s head, but for the moment they were quiet. He closed his eyes.

“You lonely, Jack?” It was a sudden, forceful question.

“Yep,” Jack answered. He didn’t hesitate. He didn’t have to. Not with Sophie. He was starting to see what Nash saw in these blunt and slightly wild island women.

He’d had to think a lot about loneliness lately, about being alone. He had long ago decided he didn’t mind it much. It didn’t make him happy, being lonely—that was certain—but he didn’t mind it. Not like other people seemed to.

“You okay, though?” Sophie asked.

Jack paused before finally answering, “What’s okay, really? I’m not sure what that is.”

Sophie looked as though she might be mulling over an answer to his rhetorical question. Then she shrugged.

“What?” he asked.

“Nothing,” said Sophie

“I guess,” said Jack, stretching his legs in front of him and crossing them at the ankles, “what I meant is that I don’t know what I am. I might be lonely. I might be fine. It’s hard to tell sometimes.” He looked at Sophie, who nodded in agreement.

“That sweet little thing in the tent sure doesn’t hurt either, though, huh?”

“That she doesn’t,” he said.

“Jack?”

“Sophie.”

“It would be great if she could just stay, don’t you think?”

He had never agreed more with anyone in his life. And it would be dishonest of him to deny entertaining the occasional daydream of all of them continuing right on as they had been over the past week or two—afternoons bobbing along in a rowboat with lines cast; hiking the Beaver Forest trail, Glory’s incessant questions a sound track to every outing; cooking dinner and then sitting down to eat together, almost like a real family; nights on the back porch after the dishes were washed and the leftovers put away, sipping on bourbon, careful not to disturb a sleeping Glory against his chest. But Jack didn’t want to get his hopes up.

It felt more than a little off—Glory there with them like this, all of them pretending like this was simply their new reality and everything would turn out A-okay; all of them except Macy, who wouldn’t even look in his granddaughter’s direction. It was such a perfectly imperfect situation, like a beautiful cupola placed atop a house of cards.

“I hope she can,” he said. “But how selfish is that of me? My son is gone, so I’m going to hope to take someone else’s kid? That’s all sorts of screwed up.”

Sophie shook her head. “She is your
granddaughter
, Jack. And she adores you. Of course you want her to stay. I want her to stay. But she can’t sleep on my porch forever. It’s going to get cold, and this guiding business of mine can get pretty unpredictable.”

“We’ll figure something out. I’m sure it won’t be for long. Her mom is going to turn up here at some point. She has to. No mother just disappears and leaves their kid, do they?”

“You’d be surprised.”

The fire and Jack groaned at the same time. “I’ve had enough,” Jack said.

“Oh?”

“Surprises. I don’t want to be surprised anymore.”

“I hear you,” she said. Sophie took a long, hard swig of her beer, finishing it off. She closed her hand to crush the can and a loud rumbling escaped her throat. Her hand flew to her mouth, while Jack gaped, laughter bubbling out.

“That’s why I don’t ever drink this crap,” Sophie said, eyeing the can with disgust. “Makes me look unladylike.”

Jack raised his beer can as if he were preparing to give a toast. “You think
this
is what makes you unladylike?” he asked.

“That’s quite enough,” Sophie said with mock seriousness. “I’m turning in.” She patted his knee as she got up, walked to the car, and tossed her can into a garbage bag in the back. Then she walked back over to the fire, bent down, and brushed Jack’s cheek with her lips. They were soft and moist, like a cow’s nose, and lingered against his stubbly skin a second longer than they should have. “Good night, Jack Allen.”

Jack didn’t take his eyes off the shuddering flames of the fire. “Good night, ma’am,” he muttered. But he was too late. Sophie’s ankle and ratty shoe were all that remained, and just a split second later those, too, had disappeared into the tent.

 

It was the birds that woke him. Those birds with their doleful, unrelenting caws. It wasn’t even light out yet—though not completely dark either—the night sky infected with just a rumor of dawn. Enough to give the inside of the tent an eerie blue glow. When Jack raised his hand in front of him, it looked as though his heart had failed to circulate any blood during the night.

He dressed quickly, pulling on jeans and a heavy sweatshirt over his head, and slipping his feet into a pair of hiking boots he had found just in time for this trip at Island Outfitters’ summer clearance sale a few days before. Then he slipped out of his tent, quietly zipping the flap.

The trail to the beach was a steep, rocky descent, and shrouded in darkness on account of the thick foliage it had to sneak through. Jack picked his way over the rocks and roots, placing one foot nearly in front of the other on the narrow path. As he walked, the muffled grumble of the ocean grew louder, and just when it seemed to almost totally surround him, just when he felt as though the trail would never end, it spit him into the open, onto the longest expanse of beach he had ever seen.

He stood there for a while, he didn’t know how long, trying to register it all. A hundred, maybe two hundred feet in front of him, waves met sand, then retreated, clawing at the beach with foamy hands like a rake. This happened all up and down the shoreline, as far as he could see. The steady crumpling and clawing created a quiet roar that filled Jack, lifted him in that fullness.

And past the shore, past the rocking waves working their way inland, there was nothing. Nothing and nothing and nothing. Until the Kuril Islands or the north end of Japan, depending on how far north or south one might drift. It made the world seem so small, so intimate, to think that the only thing that separated him, Jack Allen, from the coast of Japan was a couple hundred feet of sand and a few thousand miles of water. But there was the volume of water to consider, too. The thousands of feet it descended below the surface; the fish and sharks and whales and octopi and masses of unknown creatures it contained; the totally foreign, wholly complete world that functioned just below the waves. It was too much, then. Too much to even try to fathom. And just like that, just like the night at the extravaganza sitting next to Sophie and looking at Mars burn red in the night sky, he was back to feeling like a tiny crumb on that beach.

Large outcroppings of rocks dotted the beach to Jack’s left. In the waning shadow of night, they looked like haystacks looming, like miniatures of the rocks from
Goonies
. Jack should know. He had watched that movie, endured that movie, endlessly on account of Nash. The wind whipped at Jack as he clambered up onto one of the smaller, flatter rocks. It stood about the size of a two-car garage and had deep grooves that formed a natural ladder up the back. A plaque hung from the side, though he couldn’t make it out in the thin predawn light.

So he sat there atop the rock, letting the wind whistle at him, into him, and wondered what the hell he was supposed to do. It would help if he knew what he wanted, or if he felt like he really wanted to do one thing as opposed to another. But that wasn’t the case. He just didn’t really care anymore. He knew he’d have to call Magda eventually. He knew he’d have to go back to Green Bay at some point or another. Those were absolutes. But the rest was clear as mud. He suddenly, for the first time that he could remember, didn’t belong anywhere. He didn’t have a home to go back to—not his home, anyway. Not the way it used to be. And he knew he was overstaying his welcome with Macy. Especially now, with all the added stress of late.

Jack’s second-in-command at the concrete shop had e-mailed him a few days back, wondering whether he’d consider selling the business. At first the idea had seemed crazy. What would he do with no job, nowhere to be each morning? He had built that business from scratch with his own two hands. He had sacrificed time with his family and a decent golf swing to see it succeed. But just then, sitting atop a rock in the fog of early morning, Jack saw the business, his life’s work, for what it was: work. Goddamn concrete. It wasn’t like he was curing cancer or feeding the hungry. And if he wanted to, really wanted to, he could do anything, go anywhere.

The sky matched the water below it, and both of them melded into a solid wall of slate. But there was motion beneath the gray haze. Jack could hear it. Feel it. His bones buzzed with it.

Because it’s their time. Their time! Up there! Down here, it’s our time.
That one line echoed through him. Nash might be gone, his wife might be divorcing him, he might have a grand-daughter who could melt him with one look and whom he’d probably have to send back to a drugged-out version of a woman his son had had an affair with way back when, but here, this was Jack’s time. He was sure of nothing if not that.

The vista looked positively empty to him. Empty and still and indifferent, and in a flash, Jack knew that he wouldn’t ever leave here. Not for good, anyway. If he left, he’d come straight back. Back to where angry wind fought unruly water to make music composed just for him. Music he finally understood.

 

The fog had started to lift as Jack ambled toward the campsite. Even before he reached it, he could hear a woman’s voice floating in the air in front of it. Jack stopped. It took him a moment to place the song. Sophie’s voice. Who would’ve guessed she’d have a voice like that? Throaty and heavy and soulful, just like Janis Joplin but without the edge. He got chicken skin—that was what Nash called it his whole life—the hair on his neck prickled. Glory’s voice joined in at the chorus. “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.” It floated up, light and tiny and hopeful, sliding in just under each of Sophie’s words like a napkin beneath a glass. As Jack stood there, transfixed, he felt his eyes smart, his cheeks dampen. And his chest . . . his chest felt as though it were suddenly a size too small.