Chapter 23. Fisher
I take back what I said about time gathering speed. This week has stretched every single solitary second on me. My eyes snap open while it’s still dark on Friday morning, and my brain launches into the day before my body gets the memo. I go over everything I’m planning to make, prep all that I can, then pace the house in a purposeless circle.
On my fourth lap, an idea hits me. I check the clock, and when I see that it’s not yet even six, the plan solidifies. Blake’s family won’t be by to pick up Indy for the weekend until early afternoon, and my plans with Sage aren’t until after that. When I went to the store last night, I spotted a flyer advertising that today would be the first day to see the shapes in the sand.
I leave a note for Indy, scoop up a jacket and my keys, and book it for Founder’s Point.
I’m the first to pull into the parking lot by the beach, aside from an elderly man clad in a bright tie-dye hoodie who appears to be setting up. There are signs all around the wooden stairs that snake their way down a smaller cliff, all indicating that onlookers are limited to observation only until the maze is complete.
“COME ’ERE!” the man hollers out to someone, but continues to walk in various directions, angled over the sand like he’s inspecting it for something.
Then the guy stops and spins in my direction. “COME DOWN HERE!” he echoes.
I look around to see who he’s yelling at. “Me?!” I shout back.
He nods demonstrably until he sees me start down the steps, however hesitant. I just wanted to kill some damned time, didn’t want to get pulled into a task.
“Grab a rake,” the old crab says when I make my way to him. I see he’s got a group of rakes with various metal heads, their poles all covered in different kinds of decorative tape. “Rainbow one is yours,” he adds.
“Oh, no,” I say, waving my palms in the air. “I couldn’t.” I remember Sage talking about the labyrinth designs here, and I’d thought it would be nice to see. She made them sound like something, I don’t know, transformative. “I don’t want to fuck it up,” I explain.
“Y’can’t,” he replies. “The entrance and exit will be next to each other, and I always begin each maze with a left turn. We’ll cover as much of the sand as we can that’s exposed right now. Go on. More help’ll be here soon.”
I screw my eyes at the guy’s bright colors against the rest of the gray around us. The air feels heavy, like maybe Sage was right and a storm is imminent. “So, no other instructions? No tips? Nothing to keep in mind?” I ask sharply.
“Nope. If you like something, such as, if you like looking at that there rock—Bannet Island, the Spuners call it.” He stabs a finger at a tall, jagged mound fifty yards or so into the water. “If y’like lookin’ at that, then make your path work so you can face it more. If you want to look at the ground and your own goddamn feet, make your shit wrap around in a billion little angry mind-fucked circles for all I care. The point is just to do it.”
A shock of laughter punches through my chest. “Aren’t old bastards in tie-dye supposed to be friendly and, I dunno, a little more gregarious?” I ask.
He straightens and frowns at his sweatshirt. “Local girl bought it for me last year,” he says sheepishly. “Think it’s supposed to be ironic.”
Hilarity bounces through me. “Let me guess who,” I say.
“Fisher?”
As if conjured by the thought, I turn around and find Sage at my back, smiling up at me like the most welcome apparition. The tip of her nose is pink in the early-morning air.
“What are you doing here?” she asks with a warm grin.
“Remembered you talking about them and wanted to come see,” I say. “He yelled at me,” I add, pointing at her grumpy pal. Her yelp of laughter makes me pull her into my side like a reflex.
“Amos,” she tsks before lifting her chin back to me. “Go easy on him. Amos spends his summers driving up and down the West Coast, visiting with his eccentric family and then—what did you say last year?” she asks.
Amos rolls his eyes with a rattled sigh. “I’ve got a brother that owns an apple orchard in Southern California and a hippie sister in the Bay. I visit them and theirs and then have to unwind by trying to get into a meditative state, repeatedly.”
“You gave him my rake?” Sage chides.
“He looked like a rainbow kinda guy,” he says ingenuously.
She grabs the third rake and surveys the expanse before us.
“How do I do it? I don’t want to mess it up,” I ask her, hoping she’ll be more forthcoming. I don’t think I like not having set directions for where I should go, or how big I should make the circles.
“I’m never sure, either. You just do what feels right, I think.”
It shouldn’t be a struggle to do this intuitively, to chart a simple circular path through the sand. So I do my level best to just… go. But, within a few minutes, I end up closing myself in. I wave down Amos and Sage to come help me untangle myself, no way to continue without raking over one of the other sets of lines I’ve already drawn.
“Leave it,” Amos says. “Sometimes that’s just where that path needs to end.” Then, with his back turned as he starts to walk away, making a new trail behind him as he goes: “It all washes away with the tide.”
I look at Sage. “That doesn’t seem kinda sad? To do all this just for it to wash away?” Pointless felt too callous to say.
“I don’t think so,” she replies. “Not if you can accept the impermanence of it. Sometimes people will write things that they’re worried about and carry with them into the maze, and it’s sort of therapeutic to leave it there—leave it behind. Other times it’s about learning to enjoy the journey in a way that’s more tangible than on some pithy sound bite. Even…” She looks across everything I’ve traced and meets my eyes. “Even though it takes you in circles that don’t lead anywhere in particular. Even if it can’t really go somewhere in the end. Once you accept the impermanence of it, you give yourself permission to enjoy it now.”
Something pulls painfully tight behind my solar plexus. She’s so beautiful in this moment it makes me feel close to panic, heart thumping erratically. I drop the rake, reach out for the edges of her jacket, and haul her into me again. I let my thumb skate across the bridge of her freckles before I curl down and kiss her lips. Just once. Just one to slake whatever this thirsty feeling in me is.
When we break apart, a collection of moments between us pass, her fists twisting in my shirt and her eyes searching mine. I think we’ve spun something together here this month, something we can maybe accept the impermanence of and still enjoy in the meantime.
We continue to work on our paths. I take a straighter approach going forward, with edges that only slightly curve. Sage makes braver ones with big dramatic swoops and multiple direction changes. I couldn’t say how long it takes, but eventually, I find a way to just be. The lines all start to connect as if they had that intention all along. Until Amos comes over at some point and instructs Sage and me to find a way to merge and connect with the road he’s created for the exit. I loop around, almost all the way to the water, and swerve my way to her. Amos’s trail blends into the edge of the one she’s made, and she and I form up the borders that finish the last leg.
The three of us step back and look at the great shapes before us. Even the turns I’d made and thought were too jarring end up curving into something better.
Voices start to flit through the breeze, and a crowd begins milling onto the sand.
“You want to stay awhile?” I ask Sage.
“Nah,” she says happily. “I left behind what I needed to for now.”
So did I.