The rock stuck up from the water like a black thumb. Reed and Claire—former high school sweethearts, current empty nesters—stood at the base.
Vince watched them as his group got back into their kayaks. Reed he watched specifically. Reed kept almost stepping on the turtle.
“I’ll stand here,” Vince said. “So no one steps on her.”
Claire bent down to look at the turtle. “It looks sick.”
“She,” Vince corrected. He was a guide, though not their guide, because Reed and Claire didn’t have a guide. Reed hadn’t known that was an option. “And she’s fine. She’s a hundred and twenty years old.”
“Those things on her,” Claire said.
The turtle was craggy and sunbleached and matched the stones at the spot where they had parked their rented ocean kayaks. She sat almost motionless, just out of reach from the lapping water. Eyes closed. Eyes open. Eyes closed again. Gray tumors bubbled in clusters all over her salt crusted body. Some were tipped red as if infected and others were ashen and husked like old hornets’ nests.
Vince shrugged. “From the runoff maybe. The pineapple farms. She’s not in pain.”
“You don’t know that,” Claire said.
There was one trail and it started out steep. Then, from there, it went straight up. That’s what it looked like from the beach anyway. Reed wanted to ask Vince whether there was another way to the top, but he was already leading his small armada of tourists back out to the open ocean.
“Guidebook says it looks harder than it is,” Claire said.
Reed crouched and his knees popped. “Hell, I’ll just go slow.”
Claire went fast. She ranged far ahead of him, her freckled shoulders disappearing and reappearing as they ascended the rough switchbacks. Her legs were so strong now. When did that happen?
She waited for him where the trail ended at a sheer rock face. An orange rope, knotted on one end, hung down from the top and flitted in the wind. Reed couldn’t see where it was anchored.
Hell, Reed thought and offered to go first. He trusted the rope and pulled himself up. He found his foot fit perfectly in a groove of stone. From there, he held onto a rocky jutting above his head. The guidebook was right. It was easier than it looked. The grade leveled off. Reed found places to grab. Places to step. He started to feel pretty good until he looked back. Claire was still on the first foothold.
“So yeah,” she said in a small voice. “I’m afraid of heights, I just realized.”
Reed traversed back down to her. Her tangy anxiety sweat mixed with sunscreen. It stirred something in him. He kissed her shoulder. “Just follow me,” he said, like it was just that easy.
And, well? It kind of was. They made it to the top fast after that. It wasn’t really very dangerous in the end, but it felt good to lie there at the mossy summit next to each other, breathing heavy, grinning and not talking, like they had just survived this wild adventure.
Claire stood up and surveyed the vista. It was early sunset then. Pink clouds and everything. A million shades of blue in the water around them.
But Reed didn’t see any of that. Reed was only watching his wife. Except she wasn’t his wife anymore, was she? She was someone else. Someone he’d saved.
Someone who was frowning and pointing off somewhere in the ocean.
“Those are our kayaks, I think,” she said.
They went down as fast as they could, though by then, what did it really matter? They could see their situation long before they were off the trail.
High tide. Barely a narrow inch of sand remained on the beach.
“They’re gone, all right,” Reed said, looking around. “The paddles and everything. Our phones. Jesus, those snacks too.”
“Someone will come, I bet,” Claire said. “The rental company will send someone, won’t they?”
“Well,” Reed said. “We have them for the week.”
“Oh Christ!”
“Maybe,” Reed said, rubbing his chin. “Maybe I can swim it.” He stretched his hamstrings and looked at the distant shoreline. A mile, he guessed. Far. But the feeling from the top of the rock was still surging in him.“Hell, I’ll just go slow.”
“You’re going to leave me?” Claire said.
“No.” Reed reached for his wife. He kissed her fingers. “I’m going to save you.”
It was dark and he was making decent progress when the current turned against him. Halfway across, or what Reed hoped was at least halfway across, his calf cramped and soon after, the muscles above his knee seized, freezing the limb entirely. He was using most of his energy to snatch a breath above the increasingly choppy water when his other calf cramped.
Reed confronted the idea of sinking. The reality of it. He closed his eyes and imagined drifting to the bottom of the ocean. That’s when he saw the turtle again. Or felt him, really. Swimming in circles, riding the currents. So graceful. So beautiful even with its tumors. So alive. Just like him. Just like Reed, Reed thought. He opened his eyes and clawed toward the surface. Reed’s still alive, he thought, gasping for air and reaching out into endless black ink.
Surfers found him right before dawn the next day. His body, anyway. Caught in the wake. The park rangers and Coast Guard argued about jurisdiction. Claire was rescued by fishermen sometime during the night and remarried within the year. Unrelated, Vince, the guide, got an office job soon after. Corporate real estate, if that means anything to you.
Who else? The turtle? Okay, sure. The turtle came back every day with the tide and lived forever. But you should know that’s the part I’m making up. You should know this all really happened except for the turtle stuff. You should know the turtle stuff is mostly bullshit.
