THEO
SINCE BUD was firmly camped at Imogene’s for the day—finally having a reason to be around her without having to explain—I walked the back streets, looking up and down for anything out of the ordinary. Many of the cabins and shanties were empty; with cooler weather, vacationers had packed up and left. The streets were quiet, smelled of chimney smoke. I’d come back at dusk, look for signs of squatters. Two squatters in particular.
After searching the streets I found myself at the foot of a spur trail. “Okay,” I said staring up the west side of Neahkahnie. “Climb.” I put one foot on Solomon’s dirt path and then the other, trepidatious, imagining the sharp blaze of pain that would inevitably explode in my hip. But no blaze came. I picked up my pace and began to zigzag up the path toward Elk Flats, feeling just a pinch in my hip. I hiked through fallen conifers with wide root systems, trekked through the Douglas firs of my youth. The trees were so immense they looked otherworldly in this ancient rain forest. Soft drizzle fell over the mossy woodland. My lungs filled with life.
Then, a bolt of pain from my hip to my ankle dropped me to the earth. There I stayed, pressing on the spot. Angry, swearing. I had dreamed of making it to the top, past the ridge of Cape Falcon to stand two hundred feet over the surf where I’d hold my arms out and tilt my head back, winds caressing me, welcoming me back to my sanctuary, a place of bottomless primal understanding—no judgments, no obligations, no conditions. Just standing, heart to the sky, the mist of waves hurling against the cliffs, then settling on my skin. I pulled Andréa’s face into my mind’s eye. I imagined her sitting next to me, imagined our life, the life we would have had, then imagined her with her mysterious husband and their son. Another pointless dream.
As the pain in my leg subsided, I took in my surroundings. I was farther up the path than I thought I’d be. Neahkahnie Mountain was so similar to the lush woodlands of the Gangwon-Do region. The lakes and rivers, full of cuttlefish and pollack. I taught the children there, as Solomon taught me here, which plants were poisonous, which were not.
There exists three times in my life when I felt wholly right in my own skin or that I was in the right place, meant to be there, or do what I did. Three times: avenging Kiernan, loving Andréa, and teaching those children as Solomon taught me.