The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All (10 page)

    After breakfast at the Bigfish, their mood thawed, and by mid afternoon everyone agreed to stay-anything less was an unreasonable waste of what promised to be fine weather and several as yet corked bottles of wine.

    Indeed, the remainder of the visit was splendid. By day, they set up a badminton net and a crude horseshoe pit and played until the light failed. Karla and Li-Hua shot two memory cards of photos. Bernice taught Lourdes cribbage and gin rummy. She even managed to power through a book about dream symbolism by candlelight while her companions slept. The book wasn't particularly illuminating in regards to her specific experiences. Nonetheless, she slept with it clutched to her breast like a talisman.

    On the final evening, Bernice went with Lourdes to the woodshed to fetch an armload of dry pine to bank the fire. They lingered a moment, saying nothing, listening to the crickets and the owls. From inside came the raucous cries and curses of the latest debate between Dixie and Karla.

    Lourdes said, "I haven't thanked you. I was in trouble the other night."

    Bernice laughed softly. "Don't worry about it. Nancy would've killed me herself if I'd let you sink. You have no idea how many years she spent freezing by the pool while I had my swim lessons when we were kids."

    "That's Mom."

    "Yes, well…" Bernice cleared her throat. "I think I was hallucinating. Lack of oxygen to the brain."

    "Oh?"

    "I've been meaning to ask. Did you happen to see anything odd in the water?"

    "Besides you?"

    "Watch your lips, kid." Bernice smiled, but her hand tightened on the frame of the shed. The pit of her stomach knotted. Last night she'd been under the lake again, and Nancy was with her, glimmering dead white, hands extended. Only, it wasn't Nancy. She'd simply given the figure a face. "No biggie. I sucked in a lot of water. I think a fish swam by. Panicked me a bit."

    Darkness had stolen across the water and through the trees, and Lourdes was hidden mostly in shadow, except for where lantern light came from the windows and revealed her hair in halo, a piece of her shoulder, but nothing of her expression. She said, "I didn't see any fish." She was silent for a moment, and when she spoke again her tone was strange. "There was something wrong with that boat."

    "I'll say. Probably rotted clean through."

    "What I mean is, it wasn't right. It didn't belong here."

    Bernice tried to think of a witty response. She wanted to scoff at what Lourdes was hinting. "Oh," she said. "
The Flying Dinghy
of Lake Crescent, eh?"

    Lourdes didn't say anything.

7

    Three years passed before the Redfield Girls returned to Lake Crescent. This was Dixie's year to choose and she invited Lourdes, who agreed to join them. Bernice and Li-Hua declined to accompany their friends on the trip, a first since the women had established the yearly tradition. Bernice begged off because the week prior she'd fallen while cleaning her gutters and suffered a broken ankle. It was healing nicely, although it was wrapped in a cast and not fit for bearing any kind of weight. Li-Hua's excuse was that Hung remained in China on a business trip and someone had to keep an eye on their rambunctious teenage sons, Jerrod and Jules.

    Bernice knew better. While Dixie and Karla had quickly gotten over the close call with the rowboat, she and Li-Hua shared a profound antipathy toward the lake; its uncanny emanations repelled them. As for Lourdes, an invitation into the circle was irresistible to a girl of her youth and inexperience, albeit she expressed reluctance to abandon Bernice. In the end, they had a few glasses of wine and Bernice told her to go-no sense watching an old fuddy duddy lie about all weekend listening to her bones knit.

    Bernice spent the whole weekend at home, pruning rose bushes, and riding around on Elmer's sputtering mower. Sunday morning news predicted a storm. She worked straight through lunch and finished putting away the tools and hosing cut grass stems from her ankle cast minutes before storm clouds blocked out the fading sun. Thunder cracked in the distance and it began to rain. She hobbled to the pantry, searching for flashlights and spare batteries. The power died a few minutes later, as it always did during storms, and she grimaced with smug satisfaction as she lighted a bunch of candles (some of the very same she'd purchased on Saturday!) in the kitchen and her bedroom. She boiled tea on the camp stove Elmer had always kept stashed in the garage, and retired to bed, intent upon reading a few chapters into a pictorial history of the Mima Mounds. The long, long afternoon of yard work put her under before she'd read two pages.

    Bernice woke in complete darkness to the wind and rain falling heavily on the frame house. A lightning flash caused the shadows of the trees to stretch long, grasping fingers down the wall and across her blanket. Something thumped repeatedly. She grabbed the flashlight and crawled from bed and went into the living room, leaning on the cheap rubber-tipped cane she'd gotten at the hospital. The front door was wide open. The elements poured through, and all the papers she'd left stacked on the coffee table were flung across the floor. She put her shoulder against the door and forced it shut and threw the deadbolt for good measure.

    She fell into an easy chair and waited with gritted teeth for the pain in her ankle to subside. While she recovered, the fact the door had been locked earlier began to weigh heavily on her mind. What was it that brought her awake? The noise of the door banging on the wall? She didn't think so. She'd heard someone call her name.

    The storm shook the house and lightning sizzled, lighting the bay windows so fiercely she shielded her eyes. Sleep was impossible and she remained curled in her chair, waiting for dawn. Around two o'clock in the morning, someone knocked on the door. Three loud raps. She almost had a heart attack from the spike of fear that shot through her.

    Without thinking, she cried, "Lourdes? Is that you?" There was no answer, and in an instant her thoughts veered toward visions of intruders bent on mischief and the spit dried in her mouth. Far too afraid to move, she waited, breath caught, straining to hear above the roar of the wind. The knocks weren't repeated.

8

    Bernice didn't fly to France for Lourdes's funeral. Nancy, mad with grief, wanted nothing to do with her sister. Why hadn't Bernice been there to protect Lourdes? She'd allowed their daughter to go off with a couple of people Nancy and Francois scarcely knew and now the girl was never coming back. As the weeks went by, Nancy and Bernice mended fences, although Francois still wouldn't speak to her, and the boys followed suit. Those were dark days.

    She'd gone into a stupor when the authorities gave her the news; ate a few Valiums left over from when she put Elmer in the ground, and buried herself in blankets. She refused to leave the house, to answer the phone, scarcely remembered to eat or shower.

    Li-Hua told her more about the accident when Bernice was finally weaned off tranquilizers and showed signs of life once again.

    The story went like this: Dixie had driven Karla and Lourdes to Joyce, a small town a few miles west of Lake Crescent. They ate at a tiny diner, bought some postcards at the general store, and started back for Olympia after dark. Nobody knew what went wrong, exactly. The best guess was Dixie's Subaru left the road and smashed through the guard rail at mile 38-Ambulance Point. Presumably the car went in and sank. Rescue divers came from Seattle and the area was dredged, but no car or bodies were found. There were mutters that maybe the crash happened elsewhere, or not at all, and conjectures regarding drift or muck at the bottom. Ultimately, it amounted to bald speculation. The more forthcoming authorities marked it down as another tragic mystery attributed to the Lake Crescent curse.

    Bernice took a leave of absence from work that stretched into retirement. Going back simply wasn't an option; seeing new faces in Dixie and Karla's classrooms, how life went on without missing a beat, gutted her. Li-Hua remained in the counselor's office. She and Hung had come very late to professional life and neither could afford retirement. Nonetheless, everything was different after the accident. The remaining Redfield Girls drifted apart-a couple transferred, three more called it quits for teaching, and the others simply stopped calling. The parties and annual trips were finished. Everybody moved on.

    One night that winter, Li-Hua phoned. "Look, there's something I need to tell you. About the girls."

    Bernice was lying in bed looking at a crossword puzzle. Her hands trembled and she snapped the pencil. "Are you all right, Li?" Her friend had lost too much weight and she didn't smile anymore. It was obvious she carried a burden, a secret that she kept away from her friend. Bernice knew all along there was more to the story surrounding the accident and she'd pretended otherwise from pure cowardice. "Do you want me to come over?"

    "No. Just listen. I've tried to tell you this before, but I couldn't. I was afraid of what you might do. I was
afraid
, Bernie." Li-Hua's voice broke. "Karla called me on the night it happened. None of it made sense; I was groggy and there was a lot of shouting. People sound different when they're scared, so it was a few seconds before I recognized her voice. Karla was panicked, talking very fast. She told me they'd lost control of the car and were in the water. I think the car was actually underwater. The doors wouldn't open. She begged me for help. The call only lasted a few seconds. All of them started screaming and it ended. I dialed 911 and told the operator where I thought they were. Then I tried the girls' cell phones. I just got recordings."

    After they disconnected, Bernice lay staring into the glow of the dresser lamp. She slowly picked apart what Li-Hua had said, and as she did, a something shifted deep within her. She removed the cordless phone from its cradle and began to cycle back through every recording stored since the previous summer, until she heard the mechanized voice report there was an unheard message dated 2am the morning of the accident. Since the power had been down, the call went straight to voice mail.

    "My God. My God." She deleted it and dropped the phone as if were electrified.

9

    Once her ankle healed, she packed some things and made a pilgrimage to the lake. The weather was cold. Brown and black leaves clogged the ditches. She parked on the high cliff above the water, the spot called Ambulance Point, and placed a wreath on the guard rail. She drank a couple of mini bottles of Shiraz and cried until the tears dried on her cheeks and her eyes puffed. She got back into the car and drove down to the public boat launch.

    The season was over, so the launch was mostly deserted except for a flat bed truck and trailer in the lot, and a medium sized motor boat moored at the dock. Bernice almost cruised by without stopping-intent upon renting a room at the Bigfish Lodge. What she intended to do at the lodge was a mystery even to herself. She noticed a diver surface near the boat. She idled in front of the empty ticket booth, and watched the diver paddle about, fiddling with settings on his or her mask, and finally clamber aboard the boat.

    She sat with the windshield wipers going, a soft, sad ballad on the radio. She began to shake, stricken by something deeper than mere sorrow or regret; an ancient, more primitive emotion. Her knuckles whitened. The light drained from the sky as she climbed out and crossed the distance to where the diver had removed helmet and fins. It was a younger man with golden hair and a thick golden beard that made his face seem extraordinarily pale. He slumped on the boat's bench seat and shrugged off his tanks. Bernice stood at the edge of the dock. They regarded each other for a while. The wind stiffened and the boat rocked between them.

    He said, "You're here for someone?"

    "Yeah. Friends."

    "Those women who disappeared this summer. I'm real sorry." The flesh around his eyes and mouth was soft. She wondered if that was from being immersed or from weeping.

    "Are you the man who comes here diving for clues?"

    "There's a couple of other guys, too. And a company from Oregon. I think those dudes are treasure hunting, though."

    "The men from the company."

    He nodded.

    "I hate people sometimes. What about you? Aren't
you
treasure hunting? Looking for a story? I read about that."

    "I like to think of it as seeking answers. This lake's a thief. You know, maybe if I find them, the lives that it stole, I can free them. Those souls don't belong here."

    "I had a lot of bad dreams about this lake and my sister. I kept seeing her face. She was dead. Drowned. After the accident, I realized all along I'd been mistaken. It wasn't my sister I saw, but her daughter. Those two didn't have much of a resemblance, except the eyes and mouth. I got confused."

    "That's a raw deal, miss. My brother was killed in a crash. Driving to Bellingham and a cement truck rear ended him. Worst part is, and I apologize if this sounds cruel, you'll be stuck with this the rest of your life. It doesn't go away, ever."

    "We're losing the light," she said.

    Out in the reeds and the darkness, a loon screamed.

HAND OF GLORY

    
From the pages of a partially burned manuscript discovered in the charred ruins of a mansion in Ransom Hollow, Washington:

    That buffalo charges across the eternal prairie, mad black eye rolling at the photographer. The photographer is Old Scratch's left hand man. Every few seconds the buffalo rumbles past the same tussock, the same tumbleweed, the same bleached skull of its brother or sister. That poor buffalo is Sisyphus without the stone, without the hill, without a larger sense of futility. The beast's hooves are worn to bone. Blood foams at its muzzle. The dumb brute doesn't understand where we are.