Miracle Beach (6 page)

“What’s so funny?” Macy asked him.

“Just remembering something from a long time ago,” Jack answered.

“Nash?”

He nodded his head, still smiling.

“It’s always at the weirdest times,” Macy said.

“It’s all the time,” Jack said.

 

As they drove south toward the ferry terminal, Jack noticed the looming shape of a solitary mountain in the distance. It looked like a jagged piece of the moon that had fallen and planted itself right there in the lower mainland of British Columbia. It had a fantastic translucent glow, as if it were lit from within.

“Wow,” Jack murmured under his breath.

“Pretty cool, eh?” Macy said, her eyebrows arching to accentuate the question.

“Whistler?” Jack asked. It was the only mountain he could think of in these parts.

Macy shook her head. “Mount Baker,” she said. “In Washington. Whistler is actually a couple hours east of here.”

Jack nodded in acknowledgment, but without looking in Macy’s direction. He couldn’t take his eyes off that mountain.
That
, Jack thought,
is God right here on Earth—God saying, “Hi—’member me?”
Jack had always had an affinity for this area, and moments like this—with Mount Baker lit up like a Japanese lantern in the late-day summer sun right when he needed a little reminder that there was something bigger than him out there—moments like this were why.

Given the views and climate of British Columbia’s coast, he couldn’t understand why people would choose to live anywhere else. Wisconsin, with its fields and trees and cows, had always suited him just fine. He had felt at home there, a true part of it, until he saw this place for the first time. This place with the mountains and the ocean and the gentle drizzle now starting to coat it all. It made a person feel whole and humble all at once, like a person should feel. If it wasn’t for his business and Magda and the house, and the post–September 11 tightening of the INS rules, he would have moved out here in a second.
But you didn’t
, he reminded himself, thinking of how different his relationship with Nash might have been if he and Magda had bucked inertia and routine and taken that leap. How different he would have felt just then. There still would have been grief to stumble through, but there wouldn’t have been regret, heavy and stinging, heaped atop it all.

They made the rest of the trip in silence, punctuated only by Macy’s sporadic singing to a Canadian band that she said was called the Tragically Hip. It was as if neither of them wanted to start the business of bringing up all that had happened, even with it all looming so large over them.

On the ferry ride to the island they split up. Macy planted herself at a table with a Diet Coke and a magazine, while Jack wandered around the decks, stretching his legs. Magda didn’t much care for this corner of the world; she often wondered, out loud, why Macy would choose to live on Vancouver Island, of all places—why not somewhere a little more civilized, like Vancouver or Calgary at least? But looking out over the dark, roiling water, watching the island emerge from the horizon all lush green and peaceful, Jack understood perfectly. In Vancouver, you could smell the ocean a little bit; but on the island, it was all you could smell. It was the sharp, salty fragrance of hard work and perseverance and Mother Nature waiting right out there at your doorstep. It was a smell that percolated in your blood, so that it became more than a smell, more than a pretty view. For islanders, it became a way of life. And once it got into you, Jack could see how someone would have one hell of a time getting it out.

Once off the ferry, Jack settled back into the motion of the truck and stared out of the passenger-side window, the trees and houses and restaurants and gas stations blending together in a late-afternoon light as if they were caught between the pages of a flip book. If he looked out the window a certain way, everything was in plain view. But when he turned his head just a touch, the edges of the buildings and landscape blurred into one another and back out again, a hazy amalgamation that seemed to pass them by, instead of the other way around.

Jack wondered if Nash used to sit in the passenger seat like he was now, letting Macy pilot the beast of a truck down the asphalt, admiring her quiet ease in doing so. Had Nash hummed along with her singing, or had he joined his wife in a duet? Jack wondered what kind of music Nash listened to, what his favorite movies were, what television shows he and Macy watched. He wondered if Nash was content, or happy even. He wondered what would be on tap for Nash’s perfect day, what he really wished for in life, what he still really ached to do, what he hadn’t yet accomplished. Sure, they had talked at least weekly since Nash had moved away, but it was always about how the Pack was doing, how Nash’s job or Jack’s business was going, about how busy they both were. But never about the important things. Never about all that he so desperately wanted to know now.

Jack thought back, trying hard to remember why he hadn’t come out here more often. There were whole months, whole years, when he had convinced himself that they were too busy to get away, but now he couldn’t remember one single thing that was so important it should have kept him tethered to Green Bay.

He thought back to Ms. 7D’s question, “Business or pleasure?”

Why did everything always have to be either/or?
Both
, he decided, before reconsidering. Because there was also
neither
, and that was just as good an option.

EVERY DAMN YEAR MACY FORGOT WHAT HARD WORK THIS WAS.

By the end of a week of tamping dirt and pulling wires taut and hammering nails into errant boards, her muscles would start to get used to the foreign motions. Then fence-mending would be done for another year, during which time Macy’s muscles would go back to their old familiar patterns, and next year this time, they’d hurt like hell all over again.

“You don’t use barbed wire?” Jack asked. He tipped at the waist, resting an elbow on a bent knee, a hammer dangling from one hand. His face glistened strawberry red, and rivulets of sweat ran from his brow line downward, dripping off the cliff of his chin.

Macy shook her head and turned briefly away from Jack to wipe her face with the bottom part of her T-shirt. “No barbed wire,” she said. “Not for horses. People who use that are either too cheap or lazy to do it right. Usually both.”

Jack raised an eyebrow at her.

“Cows and other animals only need a couple strands of barbed wire or a single rail to keep them from wandering. But not horses,” Macy explained. “They’re stupid enough and they don’t see well enough to not tangle themselves up in it. And God forbid they do.” Macy paused to line up a nail against the post she was working on. With three deft strikes, it slid firmly into place. “You don’t want to see what happens when a horse goes through barbed wire. A leg or windpipe ripped straight open by that stuff is not something you want to happen to a horse that’s worth more than your car, or your house, if you can help it.”

Macy saw Jack suck in a gulp of air. “House?” he asked, wide-eyed.

“Well, maybe cottage or cabin,” Macy compromised. “At least, most of the horses here,” she said, waving her arm to indicate the span of her farm. “You’ll get to see a few that are worth a lot more than that if you come to the show with me.”

Macy had designed her pastures carefully. Even though she was still a teenager when her grandfather bought this place to pass along to her when she turned eighteen, she’d had clear ideas of what she wanted it to look like. Both for aesthetic and safety reasons, her fences consisted of four board “rails” tacked at even, one-foot intervals to posts secured with cement footings, with two strands of electric wire on the the pasture side to help the horses respect their boundaries. Yet somehow, every year, posts leaned and electric wire came unfastened and boards fell or were kicked down by horses arguing across pasture lines.

They had started that morning with the small paddocks nearest the barn intended for individual turnout, mostly for Macy’s show horses that could handle only a few hours outside because of the bugs or sun—enough to stretch their legs and “get the boogies out.” Most of the horses spent the remainder of their day in their stalls or in the indoor riding arena if it wasn’t in use, so as to protect their sleek coats from fading and changing color.

Jack and Macy had moved through those smaller paddocks quickly, mostly pounding nails into boards that had been loosened by chewing, kicking, or leaning. Once in a while they’d tighten the electric wire in places. Only a few of the boards actually needed replacing this year.

But Macy rarely got out to walk the fence lines of the back pastures, which, luckily, was where most of her more docile horses spent their days. And that was where she and Jack had focused all their efforts and energy. Now she and Jack stood far from and slightly above the barn and the paddocks in the rearmost pasture, which was shaped like a lopsided “L” that ran from the barn alongside all the other pastures in a long corridor, opening up into square acreage of treeless, rolling hills. They were currently standing at the back edge of that square, looking across the expanse with her matchbox of a barn at the opposite end. She could hear the metronomic waves crashing onto the beach just beyond the tree line to her right. This was Macy’s favorite pasture, the one that Gounda’s dam had called home, the first pasture that Gounda had bucked and played in alongside his mama. It was the pasture that the mare would be grazing in right now, a little sister or brother to Gounda cantering stiff-legged beside her, or nestling in to nurse from the mare while she chomped lazily along, if only—Macy couldn’t finish the thought, though she could see the mare and that foal in front of her like a mirage, like a pair of ghosts come to life. Her breath caught. Pressure built behind her eyes. She turned her energy to the board Jack held, waiting for her.

Like a bald angry man, the sun had climbed high into the pale blue sky and, without cover of clouds to deflect its rays, beat down hard on Macy’s back, neck, and arms. Gone was the island’s typical refreshing sea breezes. Macy could feel heat stinging her forearms—thousands of tiny electrical pricks, flirting with that thin line between discomfort and pain. She could feel her back working itself into tightly strung cords of muscles with each swing of the hammer, with each bend and each straightening. She could feel the strength steadily draining from her shoulders. And it all felt so painfully good.

Once in a while, a glimmer of wind would stir, replacing the sweet, wheaty smell of manure with whiffs of the ocean. Down near the rocky beach, the ocean’s scent sat heavy in the air, almost intrusive. But up here, in the back pastures, the aroma was lighter, refreshing—like that of a just-ended thunderstorm. Macy breathed in deeply. The Oceanus bath salts and lotions, of which her mother-in-law was so fond, smelled nothing at all like the real thing, and in Macy’s opinion, they were the worse for it.

“Ready for a break?” Macy asked Jack. She could feel sweat beading in tiny clusters across her forehead and even on her upper arms—a place she always forgot could sweat until days like today.

“Lunch?” he asked.

“Yeah,” she said. “Let’s.”

She waved Jack toward her, and he made one last check of the wire fencing, pulling at it to test the tightness, before following Macy across the field to the battered old farm truck she used precisely for tasks like this—mending fences, hauling feed and hay out to the broodmares who lived in the back pastures, bringing shavings into the barn. The truck, once red but now a nice shade of rust, waited under a cluster of trees with its tailgate already down. Macy hoisted herself onto it and dug into the cooler, pulling out a bottle of water she had frozen to help keep their food cool. It had melted almost completely, but still felt cold to the touch. Macy offered the bottle to Jack, who snapped it up like a hungry dog offered a piece of meat.

“Whoo-ee. Needed that,” Jack said, finishing off a long gulp. “The Sahara has nothing on my innards right now. I thought this place was supposed to have nice, mild summers?”

“It does—most times. But every single year since I can remember we have two unbearably hot weeks here.”

“When is that, usually?”

“Whenever I put up hay or fix the fence.”

Jack laughed.

“Honestly. It never fails. I could do it in May or August, and it’s always like this.” Macy jabbed a finger at the still-cloudless sky. “Perverse sense of humor those weather gods have, I tell you. I don’t know what I ever did to them.”

“Well, if you could make amends by tomorrow, I’d really appreciate it.” Jack laughed again, accepting a tinfoil-wrapped sandwich from her. “Or this afternoon, even.”

“I’ll see what I can do, Jackie.”

Macy looked up from unwrapping her sandwich to see someone walking across the field toward them. Dirty overalls, knee-high rubber boots, strands of gray hair escaping at crazy angles. Macy recognized these telltale characteristics long before she could make out the woman’s face.