The Great Alone

She peeled the bug-out bag’s straps away from her shoulders, ignoring the seizing, scalding pain that came with the smallest movement. It took forever to free herself; when she did it, she lay there, arms and legs sprawled out, panting, sick to her stomach.

Move, Leni.

She gritted her teeth and rolled sideways, plopped into a deep and slimy mud.

Breathing hard, hurting, trying not to cry, she lifted her head, looked around.

Darkness.

It smelled bad down here, of rot and mold. The ground was deep mud and the walls were slick wet rock. How long had she been unconscious?

She crawled slowly forward, holding her broken arm close to her body. She made her slow, agonizing way to a slice of light that illuminated a slab of stone carved by time and water into a saucer shape.

It hurt so much she puked, but kept going.

She heard her name being yelled.

She crawled onto the concave stone slab, looked up. Rain blinded her.

Way up above her, she saw the blurry red of Matthew’s jacket. “Le … nn … ii!”

“I’m here!” She tried to scream the words, but the pain in her chest made it impossible. She waved her good arm but knew he couldn’t see her. The opening in the crevice above her head was slim, no wider than a bathtub. Through it, rain fell hard, its percussive sound a roar of noise in the dark cave. “Go for help,” she yelled as best she could.

Matthew leaned over the sheer edge, trying to reach down for a tree that grew stubbornly from the rock.

He was going to come for her.

“No!” she shouted.

He eased one leg over the rock ledge, inched downward, looking for someplace to put his foot. He paused, maybe reassessing.

That’s right. Stop. It’s too dangerous. Leni wiped her eyes, trying to focus in the downpour.

He found a foothold and climbed over the ledge and hung there, suspended on the rock wall.

He stayed there a long time, a red and blue X on the gray stone wall. Finally he reached to his left for the tree, tugged on it, testing it. Holding it, he moved to another foothold a little lower.

Leni heard a clatter of stones and knew what was happening, saw it in a kind of stunned, horrified slow motion.

The tree pulled out of the rock side.

Matthew was still holding on to it when he fell.

Rock, shale, mud, rain, and Matthew crashed down, his scream lost in the avalanche of falling rock. He tumbled downward, his body cracking branches, thudding into stone, ricocheting.

She threw an arm across her face and turned her head as the debris landed on her, stones hit her; one cut her cheek. “Matthew. Matthew!”

She saw the final falling rock too late to duck.

* * *

LENI IS OUT in Tutka Bay with Mama, in the canoe Dad salvaged. Mama is talking about her favorite movie, Splendor in the Grass. The story of young love gone wrong. “Warren loves Natalie, you can tell, but it isn’t enough.”

Leni is hardly listening. The words aren’t what matter. It is the moment. She and Mama are playing hooky, living another life, ignoring the list of chores that awaits them at the cabin.

It is what Mama calls a bluebird day, except the bird Leni sees in the crystal-blue sky is a bald eagle with a six-foot wingspan gliding overhead. Not far away on a jagged outcropping of black rock, seals lie together, barking at the eagle. Shorebirds caw but keep away. A small pink dog collar glitters in the uppermost branches of a tree, near a huge eagle’s nest.

A boat chugs past the canoe, upsetting the calm water.