Chapter 15 #2
She has no idea how much time has passed. She stays in a sweaty ball, her arms around her knees. Every image in her mind is
of her parents: the way her dad’s beard is going white before the hair on his head; the way her mom still always wants to
hold her hand. The way they’ve never been apart. What’s happening to her parents out there?
Evan’s face is still pale. He looks like he might pass out.
Ruth is resolute. “It’s time to move.” She looks into their eyes, puts hands onto their shoulders. “We aren’t going to like
what we see. But we’ll make it through this, okay? And don’t get too far apart.”
The eventual hike down reveals the usual things: pendants of lichen hanging off branches, roots punching up in the dirt, insects
buzzing in Annie’s ears. But also wreckage that appears with unnerving frequency, dripping in angry seawater. The driveway
they expected at the edge of Ruth’s property isn’t there. In its place is a stew of garbage, glass, pulverized wood, rammed
and overlapping rubble.
The bottom of the ocean was dredged up and hurled at the mountain.
The three of them navigate birds’ nests of telephone cable and trash to reach Ruth’s cabin.
The yard is strewn with junk; Ruth picks things up—an empty potato chip bag and a sprinkler head—even though there’s nowhere to put them.
The stairs down to the beach and the jetty are now a jumbled heap of broken wood strewn against the rocks.
Next to the flattened vegetable garden, the chickens squawk in their coop, wandering around a puddle of salt water. Eerily, the songbirds are silent.
But the cabin survived. Walls, a roof.
“It’s a miracle,” Ruth says over and over as she walks the circumference. “It’s still standing.”
Things that withstood the tsunami look strange now: Ruth’s bright white propane tank, electrical wires still strung up to
the roof. The Honda in the driveway, its rusting gold paint and wheels sunk in the muck. Colourful buoys still hanging off
the porch rafters.
When they stop walking, Annie’s brain takes over: This never should have happened, she shouldn’t have gone to that party,
it’s all her fault somehow. If she hadn’t gone, she’d still be with her parents.
Ruth’s feet are planted in what remains of the grass, her hands on the handle of the old water pump. She throws her weight
into each downward push, trying to get the pump to yield.
Annie sits down on the porch in front of Ruth, searching for a gut feeling, some sensation that her mom and dad are alive.
Her instincts are muddy and missing. “They’re dead, aren’t they?”
Evan sits down next to her. “We don’t know that.”
“We can’t get ahead of ourselves,” Ruth says.
“Your parents are the strongest swimmers I know,” Evan says quietly.
“We have to take this one step at a time.” Ruth pushes down on the handle again. What initially comes out is thick, silty
grey and doesn’t look like water at all.
“No one could swim that,” Annie whispers.
Time falls out of order.
The wall clock lies shattered on the floor. Evan took off his watch last night, and can’t find it now. The microwave and stovetop
clocks are blank.
Ruth is collecting bandages and antiseptic wipes, Polysporin and Tylenol. She places a pair of scissors in the front zippered pocket of her backpack.
Annie sits on the kitchen island—-the only dry place—-and stares out the cracked bay window. Her grief is a jellyfish with
tentacled stingers, taking over her body, ready to reach out and lash her anytime she thinks of her parents.
“Can you get pants on,” Ruth says, as if Annie has legs to put into pants, instead of jellied appendages. Her mind can’t process
Ruth’s request, or which day of the week it is, or how far out her mom and dad must have been. Could they have been far enough
out to survive this? The jellyfish stings her.
Ruth is in front of her, now. “You’re still bleeding, Annie.”
Annie manages to look down. Yes. The gash on her right kneecap.
Blood pools on the counter, but Ruth is gone again. Annie remembers the butterfly decals on the side windows to warn the birds.
The glass shattered in one of them. The decals must be somewhere on the shattered pieces. Will birds fly in now? Will they
get trapped in the house?
Ruth returns with a wad of gauze in her hand. “Hold this.” She takes Annie’s hand and presses the gauze over the bleeding
area.
“I feel light-headed.”
“You’re in shock. Put your head between your knees,” Ruth instructs.
Her head bowed, Annie turns to watch Ruth fish out a can of roasted almonds from the top cupboard and wipe off the mud with
her sleeve. How did mud get into the top cupboard? “Eat these. You need salt.” Ruth turns. “You, too, Evan.”
Across the room, Evan is standing still, holding a broom.
Blood trails down his forearm—is it hers or his?
—and onto the back of his hand. He still looks like he might faint or vomit.
The brim of his Hale Timber hat is caked in dirt.
Annie vaguely remembers they’re low on washing detergent on Amphitrite.
She puts her forehead back on her knees, and all she can see is the fine hair on her muddy thighs. Mom never wanted her
to shave her legs. Why not? Mud is caked under Annie’s fingernails. Mud everywhere. Will her hair still grow if her parents
are dead?