Terminal Island (7 page)

“Come on, did you or didn’t you?”

“Just once, years ago, at Pismo Beach. But it was a three-wheeler.”

“Well hey,” the driver says, climbing off, “give ’er a spin.”

Henry tries to make light: “Oh, yeah. That’d be good.”

“Why not? Go ahead.”

“I couldn’t.”

“Sure you could. Why the hell not?”

“I’d probably wreck it or something.”

“Wreck it? You’re not gonna wreck it—a ten-year-old could handle this. Trust me, this mother’s been through a lot worse than anything you might do. Nothing you can
do
to wreck it. Come on.”

“Thanks anyway—I better not.”

“Come on, man, try it out. Just once around the square. What’s the big deal?”

Henry wavers before the force of the man’s insistence—there is something challenging about it, almost hostile:
Let’s embarrass the stupid tourist
. To them he must appear so useless and soft, but there was a time not so long ago when Henry would have jumped at the chance to show off. Before the car accident. Before his daughter was born. But now he pictures himself putt-putting around like an overcautious idiot, or the opposite: turning a little too fast and flipping the thing over, ending this trip with a broken back, paralyzed for life.

“No, thanks—the wife would kill me. Besides, we really have to go. Thanks anyway, though.” He waves and gets away.

“What was that all about?” Ruby asks.

“Just shooting the bull,” he says, feeling them still watching, like a drill in the back of his skull. “Let’s go.”

Chapter Seven

BIG GAME

T
hey walk past the Casino and down along the shore, the steep mountainside rising on their left. The place has the feeling of being beyond the tourist itinerary; there is little to see here, and no one to see it. The sidewalk peters out to a gravel path overhung with rustling eucalyptus trees. The thin, rocky beach is unkempt and littered with leaves. No one would ever come here to swim.

It’s getting hard to push the stroller, but just as they begin to think about turning back, they come to the end of the road. The only way remaining is a cleared trail up the hill, barred with a sign that reads, PRIVATE PROPERTY—TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED.

“That can’t be it,” Henry says.

“It has to be, it’s all there is,” says Ruby. “Look, I can see it up there.”

She’s right. Above them, visible through the tree branches, Henry can make out a ledge of snow-white concrete jutting from the brushy cliff.

“Give me a break—this can’t be the only way up there.”

“It must just be the beach path.”

“This is ridiculous.”

Henry and Ruby pick up the stroller with practiced ease, carrying it between them like a litter as Moxie sleeps within, oblivious. Priding themselves on being active people, they have a system for everything and are used to doing this on stairs, escalators and other urban obstacles—it’s become almost automatic.

The pathway is hard-packed sand under a mulch of bark and curly brown eucalyptus leaves, cut through here and there with dry flood channels revealing veins of stones. It climbs steeply uphill, veering around rock faces and deadfalls. They lose sight of the ocean. On either side, the slope is all thick desert scrub—not the attractive sword plants and palm trees planted around Avalon, but prickly native brambles and tumbleweeds that remind Henry of the scraggly hills around Hollywood, or maybe Kabul.

The deeper in they go, the more they are losing the light, and the warmth. Late-afternoon shadows and sea mist are enveloping the trail like a rising tide. These September nights are turning chilly.

Oddly enough, the sky is still blue above the trees, the clouds foiled with gorgeous sunset colors. On the opposite side of the island it must still be bright and sunny. Unfortunately, they are on the shady side, looking up at daylight as if from a dark hollow. The light is an inducement to keep climbing.

“We must be almost there,” Henry says, becoming winded.

“Yeah, this is a little bit more of a hike than I expected.”

“Sorry, hon.”

“Hey, it’s my fault—it was my idea.”

“Yeah, but it’s my mother.”

“I just hope she has some iced tea when we get there.”

“And a bathroom.”

“And a spare bed.”

“Now you’re going too far.”

They summit a final slope and all at once emerge onto a freshly-paved road bordered with grass. The new road appears from somewhere inland, following the shoulder of the mountain, and intersects with their dirt path to disappear behind a high metal gate. Over this barrier Henry can see roofs of luxury condos stacked like rice paddies up and down the cliff. The first lights of the evening are beginning to come on.

“Jackpot,” Henry says, setting down the stroller. “
Phew
. It’s about damn time.”

Ruby gets out her camera and starts shooting as they wheel the stroller up to the entrance. The civilized terrain is a pleasure. Posted on the fence next to the closed gate is a sign:

Shady Isle Visitors Policy: All visitors to Shady Isle Villas must either be signed onto the grounds by a current resident or pre-approved by prior appointment with Shady Isle Management. Admission is at the discretion of Shady Island Management. No solicitors.

“Such a friendly place,” Henry says.

“I thought you loved these places.”

“What places?”

“These fancy gated communities.”

“Yeah, well, they’re safe.”

The gate is locked. Standing before the high privacy fence, Henry can’t see anything or anyone to appeal to, no intercom or guard post.
Open sesame
, he thinks. Surely there must be a hidden security camera, or motion sensors. Someone will probably be coming any second. He wonders how his mother gets around here, she who hasn’t had a car in twenty years. They must have some kind of van service.

The place is dead quiet, no sound of anyone approaching.

“This has got to be wrong,” he says, shaking his head. “I just can’t imagine what she’d be doing living here. It’s way too expensive.”

“Hello?” Ruby calls through the gate. “Hello? Anybody home?”

After a few minutes of no response, Henry says, “Nah. It’s ridiculous that they don’t have a buzzer of some kind…”

“I know. How can they not have a guard on duty? How do delivery people get in and out?”

“It must be one of those systems where the residents get an electronic key, a remote control thing like a garage door opener.” So much for visiting his mother. Guiltily tempted by the possibility of another day’s reprieve, Henry sighs, “Well, what do you want to do?”

“I don’t know. Wait a while longer, I guess. Eventually somebody’s got to come along who can open this gate. Visitor’s Policy or not, we’re going in. No way I came all this way for nothing.”

They wait for ten minutes, twenty minutes, a half hour, as it gets fully dark and all the automatic lights of the complex come on. Periodically, Ruby shoots a few minutes of footage, just to illustrate the time lapse.

“This is getting absurd,” she says, watching the playback on her tiny LCD screen. “I knew we started out too late. We’re losing the light.” Abruptly she stands up and shouts, “HEY! SOMEBODY! COME AND OPEN THE GATE!”

Moxie awakens with a start, crying.

“Shh! Jesus!” Henry says to his wife. “You’re gonna have them calling the cops on us.”

“Good. Let them. I’m
sorry
, but I’m really getting pissed off. How can they just leave people out here like this? We have a baby!” She rattles the gate. “LET US IN!”

“Calm down. Let’s just go, it’s stupid. These fogies are all inside having dinner. We’ll call the condo office in the morning. That’s what we should have done in the first place.”

“God,” Ruby says, trying to pacify her daughter. “It’s just so
frustrating
…”

“I know, but there’s nothing we can do about it. At least it’s all downhill from here. Come on—I bet we can get back to the hotel in half the time it took us to get here.”

Reluctantly, Ruby agrees, and they start away.

“Wait a minute,” Henry says, looking down into the now pitch-black tunnel of foliage at roadside. “What about taking the paved road back? Why do this path again?”

“Because we know where it goes. God knows where that road leads to—we could walk miles out of our way. Look at those mountains.”

“I don’t think so. It’s got to go back to Avalon, and it’ll be much easier with the stroller. We might even meet up with somebody who could give us a ride.”

“Yeah, the Manson family. More likely we’ll get hit by a car in the dark—there’s no shoulder.”

“Yes, but—”

“Honey, I’m just not up to another expedition tonight. Could we just do it the same way as before? Please?”

Henry sighs, “All right,” and takes up his end of the stroller.

It is worse than he feared—so dark they can barely see where they’re putting their feet; so dark they can’t see each other’s faces. Henry has never been particularly afraid of the dark, but he does have great anxiety about screwing up—so how did he and Ruby wind up carrying their wiggly, whining daughter between them down a steep mountain trail in fog and total darkness? One turned ankle, one misstep, and they could all break their necks.

“I wanna
walk
!” Moxie hollers, jouncing the stroller as she fights the restraining belt. “No! No, no, no, no,
no!
Let me
ouuuut
!”

“Maybe we should let her walk,” Henry says, getting kicked by her flailing shoes.

“Yes! Daddy, let me walk, I wanna waaaaalk!”

“I don’t think so,” Ruby says firmly. “That would just make it a thousand times worse.”

Suddenly there is a sound from the darkness just ahead of them—a loud thrashing in the brush. Ruby and Henry go silent, listening, as Moxie continues to complain.

“What the hell was that?” Ruby hisses.

“Nothing. An animal,” Henry says. “Probably a deer.”

“You hear that, honey?” Ruby says to Moxie with forced brightness. “Deer. Pretty deer, like Bambi.”

“Where?” Moxie pouts. “It’s too
dark
!”

“Shh. You have to be quiet and listen.”

Henry is flashing on the conversation he had earlier:
These wild hogs can tear you up good if you’re down on their level.
Boar, deer, goats, bison—he knows that any of them can attack people under the right circumstances, and they’re all here on the island, running wild.

Had tusks this big, I swear
.

This island is a regular big-game sanctuary—that’s one of its major attractions. So what was he thinking, bringing his family out here in the middle of nowhere, after dark? The danger just never occurred to him; they ought to warn you about this kind of thing. Now if anything happens, it’ll be his fault.

There’s that sound again, a little farther off.

“It’s going away,” Ruby says hopefully.

“No, mommy! See Bambi!”

“Hush or you’ll scare Bambi away.”

Steadying his nerves, Henry says, “Come on, don’t worry about it. Let’s just get down.”

“Like I was planning to pitch a tent.”

They continue on, painstakingly feeling their way, both aware that it is actually taking twice as long as it did to come up. It’s possible to see just enough to avoid running into trees, the fleshy eucalyptus trunks visible as ghostly columns looming out of the void, but not enough to avoid the myriad branches and wisps that hang across the path. Henry, leading, catches the worst of it.

Moxie seems to have settled down, quietly disgruntled. Now her parents are starting to find their rhythm, grimly focused on the task and making better time.

“Is this the way we came up?” Ruby asks. “It seems a lot longer.”

Testily, Henry says, “It’s downhill, that’s all I know. One way or another, it has to end up at the Pacific Ocean.”

“Wasn’t that what the Donner Party thought?”

The thrashing noise again, off to the right. This time it doesn’t stop, but seems to move toward them. It doesn’t sound furtive at all, snapping branches and ripping through the thick undergrowth. It sounds big.

“Bambi!” Moxie shouts.

“Quiet, Mo. Shit, honey, what
is
that?” Ruby whispers.

“I told you, it’s gotta be a goat or something—we’re just disturbing them.”

“What if it’s a cougar?”

“There are no cougars on Catalina.”

“I’m scared.”

“Don’t be. Put that camera away; let’s keep moving.”

“It’s coming closer!”

“I know, relax.”

All of a sudden it’s right there in front of them—Henry can see it. Rather, he can see
something
, a shaggy, upright blob lumbering across their path, so close that he must stop short to avoid bumping against it, his heels skidding on gravel. A horrible stench fills the air, putrid as a dead cat.

The thing seems to pause and look over its shoulder at them—a weird, hairy gray sack, slowly heaving—then it is gone, crashing into the underbrush.

Querulously, Ruby says, “What
is
that?”

“I don’t know.” Henry’s heart is ringing his chest like the clapper of a bell. “I couldn’t really tell.”

“Was it a
person
?”

Her saying this startles Henry more than anything else. “I didn’t think so. Did
you
?”

“I don’t
know
.”

They doggedly keep on, afraid to talk lest they attract the thing again or freak each other out more.

Then things start to get better: There is the clammy smell of sea moss, and in a few minutes they hear the welcome plopping of the ocean. Like a vast stage curtain rising, the broad seascape opens up before them.

“Holy shit, we made it,” Ruby says shakily as the trail bottoms out back where they began. The lights of the Casino are just down the shoreline, Avalon not much farther. They can even see the mainland twinkling across the water.

“Let’s never do that again, shall we?”

Chapter Eight

THE BUTCHER

T
hat night, after feeding and putting Moxie to bed, Henry gets takeout lasagna and they eat it cuddling under a blanket on the hotel balcony. Things almost seem normal again, or at least Henry and Ruby insist that they are. After all, what did they actually see? They watch Ruby’s grainy infrared footage over and over again, trying to make out the shapeless form in the trees. For an instant it almost looks like a gigantic head with no body—a freakish face blurred out of recognition.
Maybe it was Bigfoot
, they joke. It’s pretty funny really, two grown people psyching themselves out like that; it makes a good vacation story. Tomorrow they’ll see his mother and all laugh about it.