As Easy as Falling Off the Face of the Earth Read online

  Everett had a Land Rover in the hangar. After they parked the airplane inside, they hopped in the Land Rover and headed for Yulia’s. The road at one point ran close by the water and Ry said, “Hey, can I jump in the ocean, just for a minute?” He thought it might calm the itching.

  And it did. While he was in the water, it was like heaven. Or a state park. But back in the Land Rover, as the salty water dried from his skin, he realized that now it was not only the rashy bumps that itched, but the clear skin between the rashy bumps and the parts of him that had no rash. He was a million (okay, eighteen) square feet of itch. He hoped that Yulia might have a bathtub and that he could excuse himself and remain submerged in unsalted water for the duration of the visit.

  It was not a long ride. Soon they were in an old part of the city, where Yulia lived. Ry thought it looked European, though he had never been to Europe. European in island form. He would have liked to get out and walk around. For now, he just watched it all go by.

  AT YULIA’S

  At the very moment that Ry met Yulia, he knew that he would be smitten by her, too. If he were older. He was half smitten now.

  He could have fallen in love with just her voice; somehow it was like water when you were thirsty. When you had been hiking through heat and, out of nowhere, there appeared a waterfall. Or a merry brook with gravel on the bottom. Or a river. With rapids.

  Her eyes were two different colors, but both of them glanced directly into his soul and laughed. With him, not at him. She moved in the graceful but unpredictable way that a deer moves. She was very warm, but there was a cool calmness to her, too. Within thirty minutes, the warmth and coolness of her presence had soothed away Ry’s hives.

  Bluff, fearless Everett, hale and hearty and reckless, sat quietly in a chair, his hands poised on his skinny legs as if he might push off any second. He spoke when Yulia asked him a question. Otherwise, he seemed almost shy. And pale. Ry happened to glance at him when Everett was glancing at Yulia while she was talking to Del. And what Ry thought when he saw that glance was, Everett is smitten.

  I could be wrong, he thought. Maybe he’s just having a minor stroke.

  Del, in his Del way, was being useful. He offered to make some coffee, and he found some cookies and a pretty plate to put them on, and cups for everyone. While Yulia was explaining to Ry how café tinto was a little bit of coffee and a lot of milk, her cat waddled noisily into the kitchen. He was complaining, and he was wearing something and dragging it along the floor. It was his cat door. He wore it like a tutu. He was a fat cat and had gotten himself stuck in the opening on his way in to see who was visiting. So he yanked it from its moorings and brought it along.

  Yulia laughed until tears rolled down her cheeks. Del lifted the unwieldy beast onto his lap and gently eased him from his new outfit. He apologized to the cat for Yulia’s bad manners as he set him on the floor. Examining the cat door, which looked homemade, he said, “I think I could make this opening a little bigger.”

  He got up and went to a drawer in the counter and pulled it open. Riffling around, he found a small saber saw and sat back down to make the adjustment. He seemed at home in Yulia’s kitchen. Lulu seemed at home in Yulia’s kitchen, cat and all. Ry felt at home in Yulia’s kitchen, too. Only Everett seemed ill at ease. Ry might not have noticed, except that this was so different now from before.

  As they told Yulia of Ry’s dilemma and their odyssey so far, and as Del asked to borrow her boat so they could go the final mile(s), the animals sensed that Everett was available. Lulu sat loyally on the floor beside him, nudging his hand with her head if he stopped caressing. The fat cat, Fred, leaped silently onto his lap to be stroked with the other hand. It seemed to work out well for all of them. Everett loosened up. His color returned. Maybe he had just had indigestion. The pancake batter. Ry could relate.

  Before long, Everett looked down at his watch and said he guessed he’d better go.

  “Okay,” said Yulia.

  “See you later, Everett,” said Del. Only his legs and feet were visible in the kitchen. He was lying down on the floor, fitting the cat door back in its place. “Thanks for the lift.”

  “Are you going to fly back home today?” Ry asked, surprised. One ride a day in that thing seemed like plenty.

  “Yep,” said Everett. “And I have a few things to do out at the resort before that, so I should get going.”

  “Wow,” said Ry. Everett stood up. Ry stood up, too.

  “Thanks for flying us over here,” he said. “I think it’s completely amazing that you built your own airplane. It was nice to meet you. I hope your methane thingy isn’t too hard to fix.”

  He said this while they walked out onto the tiny front porch. He thought he was the only one who was going to be polite, but Yulia came out, too.

  “Good luck,” said Everett. “Or I guess I should say, ‘Bon voyage.’”

  They shook hands. Everett said, “C’mon, Loo,” patted his leg, and he and Lulu trotted down the steps and out the short piece of sidewalk to the Land Rover.

  “See you, Everett,” Yulia called out.

  Everett waved, got into the vehicle, drove away.

  “I can’t believe he’s flying back the same day,” said Ry. “Did you ever fly in that plane?”

  “Once,” said Yulia. “But it sounds like I had a smoother ride than you did. Was it scary?”

  “Only because I don’t want to die yet,” said Ry.

  Yulia laughed.

  “Everett didn’t seem worried about it, though,” said Ry. “So it must have been pretty normal for him. I guess you would get used to it.”

  “Well, he does it all the time,” said Yulia. “It’s his hobby. One of his hobbies, anyway. He has a lot of them.”

  “His methane digester exploded this morning,” said Ry.

  “His what?” said Yulia. She hadn’t heard about that one.

  So Ry told her about it. Then, somehow, he found himself telling her about breakfast and the pancakes. He mentioned the argument about the cave.

  “You mean the time they were building the wall and one of them put a rock on top that fell and broke something?” asked Yulia.

  “Ripped their sleeping bags,” said Ry.

  “Oh, right,” she said. “That’s it. They’ve been arguing about that for twenty years.”

  “You’re kidding,” said Ry.

  “It’s one of their favorite arguments,” she said.

  Ry looked at her, half smiling, half quizzical. She laughed.

  “You’ve noticed they’re both as pigheaded as mules, right?” She laughed again. “If that makes any sense.”

  A scraping sound came from above and behind them. They turned and looked up to see Del lifting himself up onto the roofline. He walked along the peak as easily and as sure-footed as if he were walking down a sidewalk.

  “You’re such a show-off,” said Yulia. Del smiled, pleased.

  “What are you doing up there?” asked Yulia.

  “Checking the connection to your satellite dish,” said Del. “I think it might be loose.” Arriving at the dish, he stooped on one knee and began his inspection.

  “You don’t have to fix everything in my house on the first day you’re here,” said Yulia.

  “This is self-interest,” said Del. “I want to take a look at the Weather Channel.”

  “You’re going to sail my boat by what the Weather Channel says?” asked Yulia.

  “No,” said Del. “I was just taking a look, and it didn’t work, so…” His voice trailed off as he reached down and fiddled with something.

  “That might do it,” he said. He rose to his feet again, turned, and strolled back to the other end, where there was a tall fence to climb down onto, and disappeared.

  Even Ry, who was a guy, and fifteen years old, knew he was watching a love poem. He looked at Yulia. She was still looking up at the roof, though Del wasn’t there now. Her expression was hard to read without background information.

  It wo
uld help to know, for example, that she met Del on her first trip to New England. Her first snow, really. They were both visiting friends, who decided to ski, cross-country, up (and down) a mountain. Yulia had never skied. But how hard could it be? She clipped the borrowed skis onto the borrowed boots. Immediately they slipped out from under her, apparently uncontrollable. She was terrified—of the mountain, of the afternoon ahead—but she didn’t want to admit it. Her friends offered advice, but she was flustered. Their advice didn’t seem to make sense.

  Then Del materialized in front of her. He skied up the mountain backward, facing her. He coaxed her along by telling her stories, telling her she was doing just fine. When they came back down, he put his skis in front of hers, as parents do with children, and guided her down.

  It would help to know all the stories like that one.

  It would help to know, at the same time, that Del and Yulia had driven for two hundred miles through Guatemala and Chiapas on a tire with a gash in it, passing by a place where they could have gotten a new one, because Del had his mind set on making it to San Cristóbal before it blew. All of those kinds of stories were in her gaze, too.

  How could Ry know any of that?

  She turned to him with simple friendliness and said, “We better go see what he’s up to.”

  They went to the marina where Yulia kept her boat, to make sure it (“she”) was ready to go, and so that Yulia could show them where everything was. What Ry knew about boats would fit inside a smallish gimbal,* with a lot of room left over, so he trailed along behind Del and Yulia, admiring the hugeness of this one, the sleekness of that one. Some reminded him of sports cars in a way, only the boats were even prettier than that. Others looked like floating RVs. No doubt they were nice to be in, or on; they just didn’t look as good. To him. The names of the boats, at least the English ones, were fun to look at, too. He liked the corny ones: Summer Salt. Vitamin Sea. Can’t Fathom It. Freudian Sloop. Get My Drift.

  The Spanish ones he tried to translate. He could figure out the easy ones: Suenos. Nada Mucho. He didn’t know what Chupacabra was.

  The boats that had people on them either had people bustling around doing boat maintenance or people having beers or cocktails. Ry smiled at everyone because it’s the universal language and because he was that kind of guy. Some people waved and smiled back, and some did not. Depending on what kind of guys, or gals, they were.

  Yulia’s boat, when they reached it, was of the sports car type, on the vintage (old) end of the spectrum. Its name was The Peachy Pie. She explained to Ry that it was a kind of sailboat that was called a ketch because of where the second mast was. And that, though it was easier with two people, it was a boat one person could manage, if need be.

  “Ha!” she said. “Ry on the ketch!” As if that was some kind of joke. “She’s a very docile sailor,” she went on.

  “Very forgiving. Because of the rigging.”

  “Can you say that in English?” Ry asked. Just to keep things from getting too salty.

  “She’s a peach,” said Yulia. “Easy to sail. If you make a mistake, it probably won’t kill you. You’ll love it.”

  “Cool,” said Ry. Hoping this was true. Because, without warning, waves of apprehension now rose and collapsed within him. Maybe it was the sailboat, and how oceanic the ocean was looking. Or maybe it was a new thought that was trying to find form in his mind as he walked back down the pier, once again behind Del and Yulia. It seemed as clear as day that they belonged together. He didn’t know what had separated them, flung them so far apart, but they were connected by an invisible force field of gravity, history, magnetism, and affection.

  The thought that was forming was in fragments. One fragment: There’s that old expression, When your only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Another fragment, also an expression Ry had heard: If you ask surgeons how to fix a health problem, they’ll say, “Operate.” And one more fragment (this one is a little different): There is the way the seeds of some plants catch on the fur of passing animals to distribute themselves.

  So what if Ry’s need to reach his family was the shaggy dog that picks up the burr and drops it off in San Juan? What if Del was the surgeon, and going to San Juan was the operation he trusted to solve every problem? What if Ry’s journey with Del, from Montana to here, was part of the love poem Del was writing to Yulia when he walked across her roof?

  When they had listened to the phone messages in Wisconsin, and Del said, “Let’s go find them,” it had seemed extreme. But the situation seemed extreme. It had seemed to make sense. It seemed like the right thing to do. Maybe Ry had been temporarily out of his mind. Maybe it was that shower.

  Now, back in his right mind, he heard Beth, back in New Pêche, saying, “San Juan. Hmm…isn’t that where Yulia lives?”

  He heard Sharon, in the wilds of Indiana, saying, “Ah, yes, Yulia.”

  The bizarrity of his situation fell on his shoulders like an iron cloak. The cloak of stupidity. Go find your parents on an island in the Caribbean.

  “How stupid am I?” he wondered aloud.

  Up ahead of him, Yulia and Del were taking turns making vehement gestures. They stopped and turned to face each other. Both planted fists on their hips. Yulia was animated; Del was immobile, entrenching himself in whatever position it was that he had decided to take. Ry watched them from where he was. He could hear their voices, but not what they were saying. The invisible force field kept him from going any closer.

  Two sharp syllables erupted from Yulia. Ry thought he could guess what they were. He watched as she threw up her hands and walked away.

  “Come on, Del,” Ry said softly, from where he stood. “Just go say you’re sorry.”

  From where he stood, it didn’t look like that was going to happen.

  NARUTO

  After dinner Ry went into Yulia’s den and turned on her computer. He wanted to retreat to some comfortable, familiar, imaginary place. Like the past. His past.

  He went to a website that had Naruto clips and watched the bands of anime youth with their giant eyes that in real life would actually be creepy, but on-screen made them look cool, with their spiky hair and their outfits. He looked at some that were just music videos, anime action to songs. Then he looked at some that had stories, usually battles or confrontations where some sinister force had to be faced down. They always knew how to do it.

  Yulia came in and took a book from the shelf, probably to bolster her position in the argument she was still having with Del. She stopped to watch, over Ry’s shoulder. He wished she would go away, but it was her house, her room, her computer.

  “What do you like about that world?” she asked him. “They’re so vapid.”

  “They’re cool,” he said.

  “What’s cool about them?” she asked.

  “They can jump high. They’re ninjas. They have magic powers,” he said.

  “Okay,” she said, but Ry could tell she was unconvinced. She watched for a little longer.

  She took her book and left the room. As she walked down the hall, back into the kitchen, he could hear her say, “Okay, listen to this….”

  Ry x-ed out of the Naruto site. He sat there looking at the screen, waiting for it to tell him something. Well, you have to ask it something, he said to himself. He thought for a minute, then he typed in “How is this all going to turn out?” and hit Search.

  The first 10 of 143 million results were about politics. Voter turnout.

  So he tried, “Will everything be okay?”

  He watched the forty-four-second “everything will be ok” video on YouTube. It was an animation, with stick figures and blurry blobs. Kind of cool.

  He looked at the everythingwillbeok.com website. This was a video, too, apparently an endless (live?) one, of a wacky-waving-inflatable-arm-flailing-tubeman. It had the sound of the tubeman, whipping in the wind. He watched it for about two minutes. It was funny. He found himself smiling.

  Easing his way toward the rea
l world, he went to his Facebook page. There was his profile photo, in all his backpacking gear, and his most recent status: “is leaving civilization now.”

  He scrolled down through his friends’ comments. Drivel, mostly. But funny drivel. His inbox had one message. It was from Eric: You probably won’t see this until August if you’re at camp, but your last text was weird. And now your phone is turned off. Everything okay?

  Ry typed back: Some things are kind of messed up right now. But I’m okay. I’ll tell you about it later.

  He thought about calling. But Eric couldn’t do anything that Ry could think of. Plus, he didn’t quite feel up to explaining his current circumstances. It did make him feel better that Eric had noticed something. It made him feel better to say something back.

  On Yulia’s phone he called the house in Waupatoneka and retrieved the lone message. The police were going to put the photo of his grandpa on the local TV news, in case anyone had seen him.

  How weird was that?

  At least he was doing something about it. His parents, he felt sure, would not want to be sailing around from beach to beach while Grandpa Lloyd was who knows where, in who knows what condition. For a few minutes, it all made sense. He knew where his parents were. And he was almost there. So close. He and Del would find them. That would be that, all the what-ifs would drop away.

  They weren’t far off now, though, the what-ifs. They hovered just outside Ry’s field of vision. He knew they were there. He went to Hulu and watched four Simpsons episodes in a row.

  NEURAL PATHWAYS

  One hundred thirty-eight miles from the telephone in Waupatoneka, Lloyd sat in a cabin in the woods, near a lake, playing poker with Betty and her sister. Betty thought it would be good exercise for his brain. Create new neural pathways, that sort of thing.