A Thousand Steps

31

Early dawn on Emerald Bay, the water not emerald at all, but a gray mirror in the new light. The morning is cool and the beach homes wait in fog, their windows throwing faint reflections back at Matt Anthony, who waits high on a hillside inside the Eikenberg gate.

He pulls on his leather work gloves. He’s got coffee in a thermos, two donuts from Dave’s in his stomach, a simmering anger at Furlong and at himself, for taking this valuable time away from his search for Jasmine. No sign of Sara, who buzzed him in through the intercom, but the wheelbarrow she mentioned is right here by the driveway gate. He wonders if he can even use it on a slope this steep.

Matt takes another sip of coffee, crosses himself like in the movies, and gets to work.

First order of business from here is to get the smaller logs to the top of the drive, and the big ones to the bottom. He picks up two of the smaller ones, and damned heavy they are, but he clinches one under each armpit and trots uphill. It’s like carrying car batteries or cocker spaniels and his legs feel the weight before he’s halfway up.

He makes it to the top.

Drops the logs, then works them upright into the dirt. Two down!

Then he pushes one very big log off its flat sawn edge, aims it downhill and gives it a push with his foot. It wobbles, then straightens, gravity kicking in, then Matt’s chasing it down the slope, guiding it with short alternating kicks like a soccer player, dodging the Victorian streetlamps and log piles and barely keeping up with the solid, barreling thing. It’s like trying to control a hog with your feet.

Nearing the gate Matt turns the animal with a strong kick and watches it angle hard right, skid downslope, stall, and stop. He brakes but catches his heel and goes down, sledding through a bed of eucalyptus leaves on his butt. He stands, panting. Still twenty feet to get that log into position. Advancing in a mood of combat, he squats and flips the log flat-end to flat-end, laterally downslope, and finally into place.

He stands over log number three as something conquered. He’s breathing hard. His whole body feels used, just like it does high up on Bluebird every day, after slinging his last paper. But he knows he can’t move the big logs downhill in this way, and not get hurt.

He takes a moment to look out at the Pacific, already a deep indigo blue in the weakening fog. Smells coastal sage and, of course, eucalyptus. Hears doves hoo-hooing in a sycamore tree and thinks how cool it would be if his mother and father were still married, and he and Kyle and Jazz could help them build a house right exactly here, where they could wake up to this every morning. He could fish down there where only the residents can go. Get a dog.

He loads the wheelbarrow with four smaller logs and grinds his way uphill on the smooth concrete of the drive. It’s slow going, all back and legs, and he stops twice to rest. His legs feel heavy but powerful.

I’m doing this for you, sister, he thinks. Doing this for you.

He places the logs upright, gets them close to level, then confronts the next monster. He thinks he can clean and jerk it into the wheelbarrow, and he sees that it will have to land dead center or the implement will flip over. He guesses the log at eighty pounds. He tells himself the log is none other than Sgt. Bill Furlong. Stoops, wrestles it up, and — all legs and arms now — takes two steps, drops it over the edge, and in.

With its heavy cargo the wheelbarrow tries to take off downhill, but Matt hangs on, gets it into a slalom like a downhill racer, left and right and left and right down the driveway, leaning back to brake, the log bouncing against the steel like it’s trying to jump out.

But he gets there, delivering his prize just a few feet from his target, and wrenching it into place beside the first big section.

He stands in something like victory, heart pounding throughout his body.

Sun beginning to break through.

Thinks: You can do this, you can do it. Sees his next four logs waiting for him in a fragrant heap just a few yards away.

Loads and goes.

By seven he’s moving slower, but there have been no disasters. Five round trips so far and twenty-five logs in place. The wheelbarrow is a godsend. So are his leather gloves. His sweat-drenched work shirt has been mauled by the big logs, and his stomach and ribs are abraded and on their way to raw. But, looking down from the top, he’s proud.

He turns to see Sara Eikenberg coming down the walkway from the house, swinging what looks like a wicker picnic basket. White shorts and a brown top and flip-flops.

“Good morning, Matt!”

“Sara!”

“You look exhausted.”

“You look evolved.”

“Aren’t you the funny one. I brought you some breakfast.”

Matt upends a big log for her and one for himself, and another between them for a table. He knows he smells of eucalyptus and sweat but doesn’t care. Sara’s perfume is spicy but rich. Her halter is dark chocolate brown like her eyes.

“I only have five minutes,” he says.

“That’s too bad.”

She opens the basket, sets out two foil-wrapped items that smell like bacon and eggs, two bottles of orange juice and two bananas. Napkins with little sailboats on them.

His bacon and egg sandwich goes fast. Banana too, then the orange juice for energy.

She’s squinting at him in that way of hers, like she’s not sure if she approves of him. Her hair is wavy and corn-colored, strands bleached by the sun.

“You give me odd looks,” she says.

He wads and drops his napkin into the basket. “Sorry. But you kind of remind me of my sister, and when I think of her the situation just seems hopeless.”

He can’t believe he’s said this. He knows his hope of finding Jasmine has been weakening by the day, but he hasn’t admitted it out loud until now. Just yesterday he thought he’d be relieved when this endless, clueless searching for her was over. The knocking on doors for nothing. The disappointment. Which made him feel traitorous and ashamed and angry at himself. And he’s angry again, right now, for eating breakfast with a pretty girl who’s not even his girlfriend — if he really has a girlfriend — when he could be searching for Jazz.

She leans forward and places her hand on his knee. A puff of that perfume. “It’s out of your control. You’re doing everything you can and it will either be enough or it won’t. It is my personal belief that you will find her.”

“Belief based on what?”

“That I like you and want the best for you. And for Jazz, of course.”

Matt’s skin is burning under her hand. And he’s surprised to hear this from Sara. This word, “like.” Does she mean it the same way Laurel means it?

Then her hand is gone and she’s nodding toward the logs. “How’s the job going, Matt?”

“Twenty-five done, maybe another one-seventy-five left. It’s harder than I thought. So I really have to get back to work, Sara. If I take too long, my papers will be late.”

Now it’s Sara who gives Matt the odd look. “Om says we die but we don’t end. That we evolve into something higher, to die and evolve again. I’m not so sure I believe that.”

“You think we just die and that’s it?”

“I think it’s very possible that we die and that’s it.”

“Are you serious?”

“Why can’t I be serious?”

“Because you have everything.”

“Yes, and that’s exactly the point. Every single thing. Life is more than matter. More than material things. If we only live once there has to be more to care about than the houses we buy and the cars we drive. There has to be more to love.”

A ripple of darkness on her face. A hard glance at Matt, then a faraway stare to the Pacific.

She packs the breakfast wrappings and banana peels back into the basket, closes the lids. “I’ll bring this back full when you’re done.”

A look and she’s off. Matt watches her head toward the house, basket swinging.