The Summer I Learned to Fly (16 page)

“How do you know where we’re going?”

“Well, for one, we’ve got a pretty decent chance of finding a bridge if we stick close to the water. And two, I know my maps. And I know the Golden Gate Bridge is at the mouth of the bay. The city’s northern tip.” He motioned straight ahead. “This direction.”

Eventually our path wound up a hill in a park with a collection of red-roofed buildings. We walked through a tunnel of trees, climbing until we reached the crest, and there it was before us: half of the Golden Gate Bridge.

I could see the red pillars reaching up out of the water, and the cars moving slowly through the morning traffic, but the rest of the bridge, the tall twin ladders and cables that inspired songs and poetry, were covered in a heavy blanket of fog.

We sat on a park bench and I started to make us sandwiches out of the cheese and bread from the alley. Whoever had left it had also left some marinated artichokes and red peppers, and I couldn’t understand how any of this wasn’t good enough to sell. We ate in silence, watching the bridge.

And then, magically, the upper half began to materialize, as if from thin air. First faint and blurred, like a watercolor painting, and then strong and vibrant, an electric red against a pale blue sky.

Right then, I put it on my list.

Most Memorable Moments:
watching the Golden Gate Bridge appear like a magician’s party trick
.

“I want to show you something.” I took out Dad’s Book of Lists and handed it to him. He began to flip through it. Letting him see this book, I felt like Hum when he’d roll over and display his belly.
We are friends
, this move of Hum’s told me.
I trust you
.

“This is amazing,” he said. “You’re so lucky to have this.”

“I know.”

“You’re so, so lucky he left this for you.”

“Do you think he left it for me? I’ve wondered. I’ve wondered if he wrote these lists so I could read them.”

Emmett looked at me with one eyebrow raised. “My father didn’t leave anything. Not even an address. He doesn’t seem to care if I know him, and he’s getting his wish, because I’m already starting to forget him. But your dad”—Emmett placed the book back into my hands—“he wanted you to know him.”

I stared at the black-and-white-static cover, the dots swarming before my eyes. I felt myself slipping into a place of grief and sorrow, but then Emmett checked his watch, jumped up, and grabbed me by the arm.

“If we don’t run,
now
,” he said, and for the first time I heard panic in his voice, “we’re going to miss our bus.”

We ran along the water’s edge of a city much more awake. We wove in and out of the crowds at Fisherman’s Wharf and the clusters of men with briefcases arriving on the ferries from the other side of the bay.

I had no idea how to find the bus terminal again, but
Emmett led us back through the city streets. We ran harder now, and though it violated every rule I held dear, we crossed traffic against red lights. We reached the doors just as they were about to close.

We climbed on board and collapsed into our seats, and by the time we’d caught our breath, we were under those ladders and cables, sailing over the Golden Gate Bridge.

you are here

Though Emmett’s research told him Wilcox was only two and a half hours north of San Francisco, the bus ride took us five. That’s what happens when you get on a bus to nowhere.

Our trip took us by vineyards and factories, up hills and through valleys, past bars with dilapidated porches and signs promising ninety-nine-cent beers, and white clapboard churches. We drove through towns with fancy-looking restaurants and towns with nothing but a gas station and a hardware store.

It’s not like there aren’t major highways north of San Francisco—in fact, there’s one that would have taken us there in exactly half the time—but there’s no such thing as a direct bus to Wilcox.

We had hours to talk, and Emmett told me about his brother. If chasing this legend wasn’t proof enough of how much he loved the kid, it was there in the way he said his
name.
David
. The way his eyes lit up and his cartoon smile grew bigger.

When we fell silent, I watched the green hills and thought about Mom. I imagined her hair puffed out from the way she pulled on it in times of trouble. I imagined her pacing. Unable to sit. Unable to eat. I imagined her thin frame wrapped in Swoozie’s embrace. I even imagined her leaning into Fletcher Melcher as he draped an arm over her shoulder, and the thought didn’t make me ill, it made me feel happy for her.

I closed my eyes and tried to send her some peace. I tried sending her a telepathic message, through whatever fine thread still connected us, that I was okay. I was safe.
Don’t worry, Mom. I can take care of myself
.

“Wilcox!” the driver called out. “This here’s Wilcox!”

I don’t know what I’d expected, but I’d expected more than this: a long empty road interrupted only by Gus’s General Store, with a bench out front that served as the bus stop.

Needless to say, nobody was waiting on that bench. There was nobody as far as the eye could see. We’d have missed Wilcox altogether if the driver hadn’t bellowed its name.

We thanked him and climbed off the bus.

He nodded. “Good luck.” He pulled the lever and the doors closed behind us with a loud sigh.

What had made him say that? Did we look like we needed some luck? Were hope and desperation written all over our faces? Our tired bodies? Our half-empty backpacks?

We sat on the bench and Emmett took out his map and a compass.

I looked longingly at Gus’s General Store. What I wouldn’t
have done for a Good News bar. Instead I reached for what was left of the French bread and broke it in half.

“It’s a good five miles if this map can be trusted. Maybe more.” Emmett tore at the bread with his teeth. It had gone from day-old to almost-two-day-old. Hard as a rock.

“At least it’s pretty here,” I said.

Bushes bloomed with dusty rose-colored flowers, long and soft like feathers. The farmland and the hillsides were every shade of green, from a light almost-yellow to the dark green of forests. A bird flew overhead, all black save for a shock of red at the crests of both its wings, and you couldn’t hear a sound beyond the rushing of a nearby creek. Other than the fact that we were far from the ocean, it wasn’t a dramatically different landscape from the Central Coast, but there was beauty to me in the fact that I was somewhere I’d never been.

I tilted my face to the sun. I let it warm me.

“Do you think Gus might find it in his heart to fill up our water bottles?” Emmett asked.

“Maybe. If we smile real pretty at him.”

“That should be easy enough for you,” he said, and I felt my face go from warm to hot.

Inside it smelled of burnt coffee. Gus wasn’t Gus but a teenage girl named Lila, who wore cutoff jean shorts, a plaid flannel shirt, and the specific sort of boredom that belonged to long summer days devoid of human contact. She filled our bottles from a tap in the back.

We thanked her and she shrugged, not seeming particularly interested in or curious about what we were up to, two strangers in a town where she probably knew everyone.

We started walking up the road. It felt like we walked a hundred miles, undoubtedly because, as Mom loved to point out, I didn’t get much exercise. Eventually we veered right onto an unpaved road. We walked by houses and farms; everything so spread apart you had to wonder why people needed that much land. Could you know your neighbors, know your community, when so much space divided you?

“It’s looking like it’s farther than I thought,” Emmett said, scowling at his map. We stopped underneath the shade of a tree with a wispy trunk and a full canopy of tiny green leaves. We drank from our bottles. In the distance I saw cows, big and deep brown. Mean-looking cows I was happy were kept to their side of the road by a wooden fence.

“We’ve got to make it by sunset. That’s when we have to take the plunge. As the sun is setting, just like in the legend.” He looked up at the sky. “We’ve still got time.”

I was tired. I hadn’t had much sleep. And like the way revelations sometimes came to me in the haze just before losing consciousness, something occurred to me.

“Emmett,” I said. “You’re a terrible swimmer.”

He looked at me.

“You told me so that day on the beach. At the cove. Sitting on the surfboard table. You asked me to teach you to swim.”

“That’s right,” he said. “I’m a terrible swimmer.”

“So what do you plan to do?”

He gave me the signature Emmett look. The
how could you ask such an obvious question
look. “Hold on to you.”

“But what if I hadn’t come? What if you’d been alone? What if I wasn’t here?”

He reached over and took a strand of my hair that had fallen into my face and tucked it behind my ear, just like my mother always did, though it felt entirely different.

“But you
are
here,” he said. “I had a life vest, but I didn’t bring it. I don’t need it. Because you are here.”

hold on tight

By the time we reached the edge of the land that held the miracle waters, it was closer to sunset than Emmett wanted it to be. I could tell by his quicker pace and the way he kept drumming his fingers on his thigh.

We walked along the perimeter of the fence looking for a break where we could enter without sacrificing our flesh to the layers of barbed wire. We finally found a wooden gate the owners must have used to enter on foot or horseback. The gate and the path it opened onto were too narrow for any vehicle.

It was locked, of course. And there was a sign:

NO TRESPASSING. VIOLATORS WILL BE PROSECUTED TO THE FULL EXTENT OF THE LAW. THAT MEANS YOU
.

I was already facing prosecution beyond what I could possibly fathom—my mother’s law was greater than the law of
the land—so this sign intimidated me less than I’d have expected.

My long legs came in handy as Emmett hoisted me up and over the gate. He followed. Here we were, finally. Off the roads. On the land. Somewhere near the birthplace of legend.

Emmett stared at his compass. He stared at his map. His eyes darted back and forth between the two and then he started off on the path, through the tall grass dotted with wildflowers.

The sun was already starting to slip behind the hills in front of us, but that was only because the hills were high; there was still some time left before real dark.

We wandered through open fields; we climbed up those hills and then down again. We walked in and out of the shade of trees. We even had to wade across a creek. I let my mind go completely. Following was liberating. Trusting someone else. Relinquishing control.

Finally, Emmett stopped. We were on a path that looked familiar, just around a bend in the hillside, but I thought that was only because to me, so much nature starts to look the same after a while.

“We’re walking in circles,” he said. He crumpled up his map and threw it. It didn’t go very far. “I don’t know what I’m doing. We’re so close, and I don’t know how to find it.” He sat down on a fallen tree, and I sat next to him.

He put his head in his hands. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

I wanted to ask if maybe there was a chance that the hot spring didn’t exist. That the kindly librarian and all her
microfiche had been wrong. But I remembered the sack of stones. I didn’t want to be the one to sink him. I wanted to be his life vest.

I put my hand gently on his shoulder. We watched the sky turn one small notch farther on the dial toward black.

And then: the sound of footfalls. I braced for a large animal to turn the bend and discover us, maybe one of those angry-looking cows, but instead it was a man. Tall and slim, with heavy hiking boots, a gray mustache, and dark sunglasses.

“Hey,” he said. “Hey, you kids!” He started walking faster toward us, and I found myself wishing it had been a cow, because I was pretty sure we could outrun a cow. There was no way we could outrun this hostile-looking man.

We stood up.

“Can’t you read? This is
private property
. You are on
my
private property.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” Emmett said. “I guess we’re lost.”

“Lost on my side of a barbed-wire fence? I don’t think so. You’re on my land. And this is my path, where I like to take my afternoon walk and not have to talk to anybody. You are officially ruining my day.”

He took off his sunglasses and placed them in his shirt pocket. He became less menacing as soon as I could see his pale gray eyes.

He put his hands on his hips. “So what did you come for? Huh? My Mexican avocadoes? To have some fun with my livestock? Or are you looking for a spot to drink beer where your folks won’t find you?”

“None of that,” I said.

“So?”

I looked at Emmett. He’d been keeping his secrets so long I don’t think it occurred to him to tell the truth. I nodded to him.
Go ahead. Tell him. Tell him why we’re here
.

“We’re looking for a hot spring,” Emmett said, staring at his sneakers. “From a legend my father used to read me. Waters. Miracle waters that healed a village.”

The man let out a deep sigh.

“Oh, that.”

Maybe we weren’t the first kids who’d run away to look for miracles on his land. Maybe it was our turn, and tomorrow there’d be more just like us. Maybe everyone was looking for a miracle.

“You’re not too far off,” he said. “West. You need to keep west. Go back down this path to the valley floor. Follow the creek. Soon enough, you’ll be able to smell it.”

Emmett looked up at this man, whose posture had softened considerably.

“So it’s true? The waters
are
here? The ones from the legend?”

“That’s what they tell me, son.”

“And is it true? Do they work? Are they miracle waters?”

He scratched at his mustache. “I can’t say. All you can do is go and find out for yourself. So go on. Get off my walking path. Follow the creek. Find the hot spring. And then, after you do, please be kind enough to leave my property.”