Mr. Peanut (21 page)

“Like what? Like
I
did something?”

“Don’t make me say it!”

She stopped so suddenly he nearly slid into her. She turned her back to the cliff and walked up the slope backward to let a group of hikers who were coming from the other direction pass. David couldn’t tell if they’d heard their argument.

He and Alice walked silently for a time.

“I’m waiting,” he finally said.

She didn’t reply.

“I’m waiting for you to
say
it.”

She said nothing.

“It’s like the prize behind door number three. I can’t fucking
wait
to hear.”

She tripped.

He saw it happen before she did. He was sure when he saw it that she’d
never make the whole hike. She wasn’t in shape; the pack was too much. A mile and a half in and already she couldn’t lift her feet even over such a small rock, her left foot catching on it, and this sent her falling to the right, toward the edge of the cliff, and when the pack slung forward she landed hard on her shoulder, her momentum throwing her feet in the air. David’s heart stopped. But she came to a halt, fortunately, and lay there. Another foot and she would’ve gone over. He bent to help her up.

“Don’t touch me,” she said.

Another group of hikers approached them. When they saw Alice brushing herself off, the leader asked if she was all right. David said she’d taken a little spill and would be fine. In the presence of these strangers she collected herself quickly, her cordiality galling to him. The trail was so narrow that passing required a kind of clownish maneuvering. You faced the oncomers, got as close as you could, and shuffled in place.

The group finally passed, though Alice just stood there for a moment. A helicopter thundered overhead, the engine roar louder than the subway or a fire truck,
NA PALI SKY TOURS
it read on the craft. It was so noisy it almost spoiled the place.

Alice tucked her hair behind her ear, waiting.

“Let me see your shoulder,” he said.

Begrudgingly, she turned to let him examine her.

Her right shoulder was scraped along the deltoid, berries of blood in full bloom. Around the edges, it was already purple. “Can you move your arm?”

“Yes,” she said, refusing to demonstrate. “I’m fine.” Out of the corner of her eye, she looked at him.

He wiped the sweat above his mouth with his palm. “I’m sorry,” he said.

She stood there.

“Can you carry your pack?”

“It hurts a little.”

He sighed. It was quiet now. He felt remorseful and wanted to kiss her. “It’s beautiful here,” he said.

She nodded.

“Let’s just get to Hanakapi’ai,” he said. “We can take care of the cut and then reassess.”

She cleared her throat.

“Do you want to lead?” he said.

She stood there like a child. “You go,” she said finally.

They had to face each other as they pivoted around. He smiled, but she wouldn’t look up.

Their pace slowed considerably over the next half hour. Every time he looked back, Alice was struggling, limping slightly and adjusting the straps on her shoulder. When he asked intermittently how she was holding up, she said she was okay, so he stopped asking. After an hour, they came to a precipice wide enough for a dozen people to stand on. A boulder formed a natural bench, shaded by a small tree—a perfect place to rest.

She stopped and slipped out of her pack, wincing as it slid over her shoulder. Then she sat and lifted her right foot. “I have a blister,” she said. She took off her shoe and sock.

“Let me take care of that,” he said. The blister was on the outside of her big toe, the skin hanging there, white as cream.

With Second Skin and medical tape in his pack, he prided himself on his readiness. She let him tend to her—this gladdened him—and when she put her shoe back on, he said, “Maybe we should turn around.”

“I want to keep going,” she said, remaining seated.

A family appeared from around the corner, day hikers with only water bottles, headed back to Ke’e Beach. The mother and father looked to be in their late forties, the two boys in their teens. They stopped at the lookout and regarded the view. David nodded at them.

“Would you take our picture?” the mother said.

Agreeing, he took her camera. The parents stood formally, a boy before each of them. Would sights such as these, he wondered, always make them sad?

“Should we take your picture?” the woman asked.

David looked at his wife.

She flexed her ankle and then, for the first time in weeks, regarded him with something approaching warmth.

“Yes,” she said.

She got up and stood next to him. He took off his pack. Before he knew what was happening, she put her arm around his waist. It almost made him jump, he was so startled by her touch. Gently, he rested his arm on her injured shoulder.

If you were to look at the picture, he thought many months later, you’d think they were happy.

They left the lookout and within the hour were making the descent to the beach. They could see it in flashes as they switchbacked down the terraced trail, though it was like looking over a terrace without railings, the sheerness of the drop scaring them back from the edge. The shape of the valley leading to the beach was like an arrowhead driven between the cliffs, treacherous work going down. David, wary from his earlier stumbles, was
extra careful. But even with the utmost caution he still slipped, the rocks coming out from under him when he leaned too far back, so he had to sit down and skid to a halt. He fell three separate times but continued without pause, urged on by the promise of a break in this labor, of food, a relief from the weight of their packs. We’ll never make the campsite, he thought. They stopped only once, at a wooden sign that was painted brown, the letters yellow. At the top, in white, was a skull and crossbones; at the very bottom, a stickman swimming in a red circle with a red slash through it.
WARNING. MORE DROWNINGS OCCUR AT HANAKAPI’AI THAN AT ANY OTHER BEACH IN KAUAI. DO NOT SWIM UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.
Beneath this warning were five sets of marks adding up to twenty-three.

But Hanakapi’ai didn’t look deadly at all, in fact seemed positively benign. At the last leg of the descent the trail was broken by a river of boulders—oblong, gray, and smooth, as small as bird’s eggs or as big as cars—that ran down to another terraced formation, a six-foot face they had to climb down to get to sand. Like Ke’e, the place was crowded with day hikers, more serious folks resting from the eight-mile round trip to Hanakoa Valley, and several hard-core expeditionists on their way back from Kalalau. The beach was much wider than it had seemed from above and easily three hundred yards long, with a giant cave at the far end, its mouth open to the sea. In the cliff wall beside it, people had stashed their backpacks and boots and hung their socks and damp shirts to dry, the hikers themselves lying in the cave’s shade or sitting where the waves broke and cooling off in the spray. Ahead, parallel to the water, was a gigantic tidal pool as long as a football field. In spite of the warning sign, maybe twenty children were swimming in the ocean beyond it.

“How do you feel?” David said.

“I’m tired,” Alice said. “My shoulder hurts.” She was sitting on a nearby rock, her pack at her feet, an energy bar in her hand. She chewed as if it were a nearly impossible exertion, then took out her water container and drank. “And I’m hot.”

“I’m hot too,” he said.

“I didn’t think it would be this hard.”

“I didn’t either,” he lied.

But she no longer seemed angry, and this elated him. The burst of confidence reminded him that he’d swum in lagoons but hadn’t yet been in open surf. If they turned around, this might be his last chance. “It doesn’t look so bad,” he said.

He looked at her, then back at the water, and she looked with him. From here the waves appeared no bigger than those he’d swum in before.

“I’m going to go in,” he said.

“It said you shouldn’t. That it’s dangerous.”

“I’m sure it is. But look at the kids.” He could hear them laughing. “I’m going to cool off.”

She gazed at the water longingly, then finished her energy bar.

“Do you want to come?” He stretched out his hand to her, emboldened that she’d touched him, that she’d relented. “Come with me,” he said. “Just to the edge.”

She crumpled the wrapper and stared at him.

“You can call for help if I start to drown,” he said.

She took his hand and walked up to the water, where he could discern some of the threat. Only a few feet out, the shore break was intense, and the waves were much bigger than he’d thought—the biggest he’d ever seen. They rose up as suddenly as cobras and then struck, a pile-driving force he could feel in his feet, the two of them pelted by the spray flung high into the air. Undaunted, David took off his shoes, Alice too, and they walked to where the foam washed over their feet. “That feels good,” she said. When the water went out, the pull made him queasy. She was still holding his hand. They watched their feet reappear, half-buried in sand.

“It doesn’t look so bad,” he said.

“No.”

The group of kids rose on the swells, laughing.

“Get through one wave and we’re there,” he said.

She looked at him, and he thought of Harold: she was waiting for him to decide.

“We’ll be fine,” he said.

They stripped down to their bathing suits and waited, the children laughing like mad. He let several waves break, getting a feel for the timing, and when he felt ready he pulled them in.

There was a sharp drop-off hidden by all the roiling water, so they were immediately up to their chests. He felt the current’s full force now, and it made him hesitate. Turn around, he thought. But then, like the moment right after you sat down on a ski lift, the undertow yanked their feet out from under them. Alice, still holding his hand, quietly spoke his name. His feet skidded along the bottom. The water was nearly up to their armpits. “We should—” he said, but then a wave rose up. He felt so scared and stupid he had to laugh out loud because he now realized it was by far the biggest wave he’d ever seen. It was too late to do anything but commit. He pulled Alice forward, trying with all his might to speed her up, the top of the wave sloshing with its own falling weight. When they dove into the wall,
her hand was ripped from his. He hugged the bottom, feeling the wave suck past. Silence first, then blackness, then light. Looking up, he saw towering glaciers of foam, as if he were hovering over an arctic landscape. He surfaced, turned, and saw his wife, or her limbs, in the wave’s humped back, Alice dismembered—arm, foot, leg, arm—rolling into view as she tumbled to shore, the parts carried as fast as if on a train. Then the wave broke and spray shot into the air with a concussion he could feel. And Alice was thrown out with so much force that she tumbled end over end on the sand, momentarily on her hands and knees. Then she sat up, coughing.

“Are you all right?” he called.

She sat sullenly and said nothing.

“Are you okay?”

She got up and walked toward the rock where they’d left their packs. Behind him, he heard a young girl’s voice. It was as if he’d been transported. There he was, with the kids suddenly, maybe fifty yards out. He turned to look at Alice again. “Should I come in?” he yelled.

She sat on the rock, dejected.

So they were back to not speaking.

He turned and floated with the group. Why had he waited so long to brave this? He talked with a few of the kids while they rose on the swells. They were from San Francisco, on a high school trip. They’d spent the night at Kalalau Beach, an expedition they’d planned for months. The hike there was insane! One girl said it was the scariest thing she’d ever done.

No matter what they did, David thought, no matter how hard they tried, they’d always come back to this place of disappointment. That picture the woman had taken of them flashed through his mind, and how Alice had reached around his waist to hold him. If they stayed here much longer, there’d be nothing left between them.

When he turned around again, she was gone.

Her pack was gone too. Racing ashore, he looked up the river of rock that split the trail but didn’t see her, though her footprints led in that direction. He found the towel in his pack and dried off, quickly got dressed, and hurried up the path. Day hikers were clambering over the giant rocks as he raced up. Alice was nowhere to be seen. How, in such a short time, could she get so far? He came to the split. One arrow directed him back to Ke’e Beach, the other further down the Na Pali to Hanakoa Valley, two miles in. He looked around again, scanned the beach once more. Nothing. Given her physical state—given everything—surely she’d head home. He looked up the switchbacks toward Ke’e but couldn’t see anyone at this angle. He called out her name—some passing hikers looked at him quizzically—and when
there was no answer he rested his palms on his knees and whispered curses so nonsensical it sounded as if he were speaking in tongues. He looked up, hands on his hips, panicked. This was an enormous commitment. If she’d pressed on toward Hanakoa and he went to Ke’e, it might be twenty-four hours before they saw each other again. Or worse.

He chose to head back to Ke’e.

He felt confident in his decision. She had no reason to go the other direction. Nor could she reasonably consider the hike doable, especially after the strain of these first two miles. Even now, the fatigue he felt as he labored back up the switchbacks was humbling, and the idea of hiking into Hanakoa seemed ridiculously foolish, far beyond his stamina. He found himself on the balls of his feet, taking giant steps forward, gasping for breath. In his mind he saw Alice tumbling in the wave and being thrown to shore. He felt awful. Terrible things happened when minor miscalculations like that were made. He’d nearly rescued her mood. They had nearly been
past
this. Somehow he needed to make things up to her. To show her that for as long as they’d been together, for better or worse, she’d always been foremost in his thoughts. Why did he require her absence to realize this? What was wrong with his soul that he always forgot?