“Yes ... no. We got to a reef, but we’re taking on water. I had this number for emergencies. We’re freezing.”
I get that last part loud and clear.
“We’ll get someone out to you. Don’t hang up. I’m calling search and rescue on my other line.”
I put the receiver down and use my cell phone to dial Pete again.
“Hello, Myra,” he says. His voice is rough.
“There’re some duck hunters out on the lake. They’re stuck on a reef. I’ve got them on the phone.”
“Where’s Bobbie?”
“How should I know? Nobody tells me anything.”
“Shit. Find out where they are.”
I pick up the other phone. “Are you there?”
I hear the wind in the phone. “Yeah. Yeah. The waves are coming up.” His friend yells something angry in the background.
In my other ear Pete yells, “Keep them on the line!”
“This is real bad,” says the man.
The man’s voice is higher, more agitated now. I slow down my voice, like I’m talking to one of my brothers when he’s coming unglued. “Okay. Help is coming. What’s your name?”
“Dan Anderson. My friend’s Roger Wood.”
“Dan Anderson and Roger Wood.” I realize I need to repeat everything to shuttle information to Pete without breaking contact with the hunters. “Do you know where you are, Mr. Anderson?”
“On the lake, damn it! Freezing to death.”
“But do you have anything by you that would help us find you? A GPS on the phone maybe?”
Pete talks in my other ear. “Good, Myra.”
“How the hell do I do that?”
“Don’t worry. It’s fine. What are you by?”
“I can see the smokestack in Landon.”
“Where are you to the smokestack? What direction?”
“North.”
“Straight north? Do you have any islands by you?”
“The reef is out in the middle. But I think we’re closest to the marina.”
Pete says, “I’m going to hang up, Myra. But I’ll be there in five and should be out to them pretty quick if they have lights. Make sure they have lights on. Two off-site teams will be right behind me. Make ’em hold on.”
I say, “Mr. Anderson, if you have lights, you need to put them on. There are three search-and-rescue teams on their way.”
“How long?”
“A few minutes. But they’re coming.”
We go back and forth like this for twenty minutes. During this time I can see from my office that Pete is speeding out to Antelope Island. I keep telling Mr. Anderson that help is on the way, and he keeps telling me he’s freezing to death. We talk about his kids, his wife, and his job. He tells me how the waves are getting higher and he can’t feel his fingers or feet. His friend Roger yells at him a few times, which is good I guess.
“Keep moving,” I say. “Jump around as much as you can.”
“I’d like to kick those rescue guys. Where the hell are they?”
“Close. Really close. Look for lights. Have your friend yell more.”
Both men call out. The sound makes my heart sink to my shoes. What if I’m lying to them? What if Pete can’t find them in the dark? What if I have to listen to them stop talking? But I don’t believe I’m lying, so I guess I’m not.
My cell phone rings. It’s my house. I shut off the call. They call back two more times.
“You need to get that?” says Mr. Anderson, talking to me again.
“No one I’d rather talk to than you, Mr. Anderson.”
“I appreciate that,” he says. “You have a nice voice.” There’s a long pause. “You tell my family I love them.”
“You’ll have to tell them yourself,” I say.
“What if I can’t?”
It sounds like he’s not talking to me when he says this, but I answer him anyway. “You can. Hang on tight, Mr. Anderson. Help’s on its way.”
The phone is quiet again except for the wind. I know they are going to make it though. I just know it. It is as real to me as if they were already in.
“Mr. Anderson? Dan? You’re going to make it.”
Nothing but waves and wind.
Then shouting. Lots of it. Roger and Dan are yelling their heads off.
“Are they there, Dan?”
“Here! Here!” the voices explode. Then the phone goes dead.
I stand in the tidy office. I’ve been standing in the same position for forty minutes. Outside the wind tips the rows of masts to the water. The shingles rattle on the roof. I realize I’m sweating.
My cell phone rings. It’s Pete. “We got ’em.”
“Are they okay?”
“They will be,” he says. His voice is flat, efficient. “You did good.”
The next morning my family is watching the men being rescued on the news. I saw the Life Flight helicopter and the police arrive, but the paramedics got the two men loaded so fast I never actually saw the man I talked to.
The reporter is talking to Ranger Bobbie. “We got a distress call after closing. Normally these calls go to 911, but they had an unusually high incidence of calls last night with the storm. Luckily, our spunky little secretary, Myra Morgan, picked it up. These gentlemen are lucky to be alive. Not hard to freeze to death on this lake, especially when the sun goes down. Not a good day to go out. Things change so fast, you have to get the weather report for the whole day. Good thing they had a cell phone. Good thing they called. This story could have had a much different ending.”
The reporter narrates a little background information as they show family photos of the two men, each happy and relaxed with their wives and kids around them. They look like nice guys. I wonder if they’ll go duck hunting again anytime soon.
The film cuts back to the reporter standing on the marina pier. “The men were transported to the university hospital and are said to be recovering well.”
The anchorwoman says, “Good thing that spunky little secretary answered the phone.” She chuckles.
“Yes, it is,” says the reporter.
I get a sick feeling in my stomach.
Carson talks with a mouth full of cereal. “Those are the guys you saved?”
“I didn’t save them,” I say. I’m a seventeen-year-old receptionist, after all.
“You answered the phone,” says Andrew.
“Yeah, but I didn’t get them off the lake.”
“So what?” says Melyssa. “Having someone talk you through makes all the difference.”
“She’s right,” says Dad. “That was a good thing you did. You have a way of calming people down.”
“It’s true,” says Andrew. “When I broke Brett’s collarbone, you totally cheered him up until we got him to the hospital.”
Brett says, “And when I pushed Andrew out of the back of the truck and his tooth got busted, you got him to stop screaming like a little girl.” The two of them exchange looks.
Dad says, “Why did I have you two again?”
The phone rings. Instinctively, pathetically, I wonder if it’s Erik. Dad answers. “Yes, she is. May I ask who is calling?” He gets a serious look on his face and hands it to me. “Watch yourself,” he says.
I can’t believe Erik’s calling me just because I got on the news. I pick up the phone.
“Miss Morgan, this is Donald Smith from KXQ. Could we interview you about your part in the rescue of the two hunters?” His voice rattles in my brain a second before it makes any sense.
“All I did was talk to them on the phone.”
“We’ve been interviewing the men about their experiences. Mr. Anderson says you saved his life. Says you talked him out of giving up.”
“He wasn’t going to give up,” I say.
“Didn’t you think they were going to die?”
“I never thought that.”
“Why not? They were in pretty bad shape.”
“It’s when people stop complaining that you know it’s bad.”
“Is that part of your rescue training?”
“I don’t have any training. I’m just the receptionist,” I say. I hope that doesn’t get anybody in trouble, but it’s the scary truth.
“You’re a high school student, is that correct?”
Just then Danny comes running through the living room being chased by a tomahawk-wielding Carson. I try to cover the phone with my hand. Dad runs out of the kitchen and grabs the boys and tries unsuccessfully to make them be quiet.
“Sorry about that,” I say.
“So it’s kind of an instinctual thing for you then?”
“I guess.”
Danny yells again and Dad drags him off to the bathroom. Carson sits down and stares at me.
The reporter laughs. “Hey, I’ve got younger brothers myself. That’s pretty good crisis training.”
There’s a crash in the bathroom.
“I never know what’s going to happen, that’s for sure,” I say.
“Thanks for your time, Ms. Morgan.”
Just as I’m falling asleep, my phone beeps. It’s a text from Erik.
U r amazing! & spunky.
I’m not sleepy anymore.
Two minutes later my phone rings. I stare at the number. The green light of my phone fills my sleeping bag. I let it ring until it stops. Five minutes later, after I’ve congratulated myself on my self-discipline, it rings again. I could just turn it off. I pick up.
Erik’s tenor voice comes through the phone. “There are two spots, you know.”
“Two spots for what?”
“We could work on this proposal thing together, if you want. I know how to write papers and you know about birds and the islands.”
“How does Ariel feel about us working together?” Saying that, straight out, makes me feel almost tough.
There’s a pause. “Ariel and I aren’t going out anymore.”
“Oh,” I say. I don’t ask why. I’m not a space-sucker. Plus, I don’t want to hear about her.
“So, what about it?” he says. “We could just bounce ideas around. You know I’m a good editor. And I could make pie.”
We both laugh. That’s a joke we had last summer.
Erik took me to a musical. I’d never been to a real musical, something live and not performed by students, but I didn’t tell Erik that. We went to a small theater in the arty part of downtown. On the street everyone was dressed up, going to dinner, clubs, and other shows.
We saw
Sweeney Todd
. Which should have put me over the edge, with all the blood and gore and shoving body parts into pies. But it was so smart and wicked and different from anything I’d ever experienced, I couldn’t help but love it. Erik held my hand and laughed out loud and made me feel like we both belonged there as much as anyone else. Afterward he would always make pie jokes no one would get but me.
He says, “So how about it? We’ll be the LHS Galápagos team.”
I try to listen to my instincts, but inside this sleeping bag I can’t tell which way is up. Giving each other feedback on our projects doesn’t have to be a romantic thing. We could just work together. We used to be good at that. “I guess so,” I say.
“Great,” he says. “I’ll call you.”
Great
, I think. Maybe.
26
Seee:
The finch’s alarm call when a hawk shows up.
I sit in the kitchen typing on my sister’s laptop. I’ve had less than four hours of sleep. I feel confused about what to say next in my paper, but I keep writing because it keeps me from thinking about why I’m not sleeping. I’ve written three pages I can stand to keep. Scientists agree that cormorants lost their larger wings because they slowed them down under water, but I want to write about why it happened to them and not to all the other seabirds on the Galápagos. What made the difference?
What’s funny to me is that the more confusing my life gets, the clearer my idea for this proposal becomes.
Mom walks into the kitchen. She came in from cleaning after one, so I know she’s tired. She shudders under her robe while she makes coffee. Melyssa’s right. She isn’t as young as she used to be.
“What are you doing up?” I say.
“Couldn’t sleep. You?”
“Couldn’t sleep.”
She sits down with the mug steaming in front of her face. “Dad says you’re famous. You saved people on the lake.”
“He’s lying.”
Mom smiles. “Your dad never lies.”
I don’t say anything, but I’d like to. The smell of coffee fills up the space between us.
She says, “You’re sure working hard in school these days. Mel hardly went to class her last semester of high school.”
“Yeah, well, she already had her scholarship.”