To my left, through the dirty bank of windows, I see my plane.
Can I do it? Suddenly, I don’t know. I can feel my heart beat and the sweat popping out on my forehead.
I reach into my pocket, coil my fingers around the arrowhead.
Promise you’ll come back, Joy.
It’s crazy.
Head injury insane.
But I believe.
It’s that simple, really.
Crazy or not, I believe.
Breathing carefully, moving slowly, I enter the aircraft and go to seat 2A.
There, I pull the seat belt tightly across my lap and check where the exit row is.
Then I pray.
I scream when we touch down in Seattle. The sound horrifies me, as does the obvious disapproval of my fellow passengers and the flight attendants, but I can’t contain my fear until we’ve landed.
I am still shaking as I follow the crowd of my fellow passengers off the airplane and through the busy beige bowels of SeaTac airport. Silvery fish inlaid in the tile lead me to the baggage claim area, where I rent a sensible car and get a map of western Washington.
Outside, I finally see the famous landmarks that have become so familiar. The distant snow-capped mountains and bright blue waters of Puget Sound. Mount Rainier rises out of the mist.
I have to remind myself forcibly that I’ve never been here. I have done so much research on the area I could have a Ph. D.
Bumper-to-bumper traffic takes me to Tacoma, a city that is low and gray and seems to huddle beneath a layer of ominous clouds.
Olympia, the state capitol, is unexpectedly rural from the highway. Every now and then I see an official looking building, with a spire or a rotunda or columns, hidden in a thicket of trees.
By the town called Cosmopolis (wildly inappropriately named, I might add), I am in a different world altogether, where huge stacks pump noxious smoke into the sky, and peeled logs clog the waterways. Here, at the mouth of Grays Harbor, the economy is obviously based on timber and the sea, and both industries seem faded or failing. Houses are run-down, shops are closed up, the streets of the various downtowns are empty of commerce and people.
At Aberdeen, I turn inland onto old Highway 101, which promises to take me to Queets, Forks, Humptulips, Mystic, and Rain Valley.
This is it. If my dream is real, I’ll find it on this road, the only one that man has built between the mighty trees of the rainforest and the gray swell of the Pacific.
I pull off the road and park, suddenly afraid.
“Get a grip, Joy,” I say out loud, trying to use my best librarian’s voice, but I am like one of my own students—unconvinced. With shaking hands, I open my map.
The town names taunt me. Which one of them is “my” town? Or will they all be unfamiliar? Am I looking for Daniel and Bobby and a lodge by a silver lake or was that all just a promise, a signpost to a future that hasn’t begun yet? Am I supposed to find a man like Daniel? Is Bobby the son I may someday have?
It overwhelms me, that thought, leaves me shaken. How will I know what I’m looking for? I reach for my cell phone and call my sister, who answers on the first ring.
“Damn it, Joy, it’s about time. I have no fingernails left. ”
“You had none to start with. ” I stare out the windshield at the empty road. “I don’t know where to go, Stace. It all looks . . . ”
“Take a deep breath. ”
I do.
“Again. ”