Dennis Yates - Minus Tide

Plagued by chronic pot holes, the road was a desperate patchwork of asphalt and followed the contours of the bay. It had once been part of the old highway before the new one came through and blasted a straight path through rock and forest. Most locals preferred the quiet of the winding road, with its turn offs and easy access to reliable clam beds. Ann decided to pull over at one of her favorite viewpoints. She had always been fascinated by storms and enjoyed being out in them. When she was a child, her mother often struggled to keep her inside, safe from the snapping trees and downed power lines.

The tide was out, exposing a slate mudflat that stretched to the riffled green water lapping at its dimpled edge. Ancient stumps and logs mired in the bay bottom glistened with shaggy coats of seaweed. Taking in the great breadth of the approaching storm, Ann noticed a hint of blood-orange sunset in a rift of clouds above the horizon and felt a stir of unnamable emotion. For a moment she even saw a sliver of blue, like a shard of stained glass held in a jaw of dark cloud. But soon the jaw closed, erasing what she’d seen much like the fate of dreams when one is suddenly awakened, crumbling back into the indefinite sea of her subconscious. She felt momentarily saddened, but didn’t know why. She usually found that the ever-changing forces of nature brightened her mood, but ever since the discovery of the arm she hadn’t been able to shake off a sense of restless gloom behind everything she saw.

While lost in thought, her eyes landed on something stuffed behind the open ashtray where she kept spare change. She pulled the ashtray all the way out and set it on the passenger seat. Jammed inside was a bent marijuana cigarette. She fished it out with her fingers and straightened it out, slid it next to her nose. Still smelled good, she thought. A little stale maybe, but it reminded her of good times. James must have left it for her when she’d dropped him off at the Greyhound bus station nearly a year ago. He’d tired of commercial fishing and of being bullied by his hard-drinking father, had joined the Navy in order to make a clean break of Traitor Bay. I know it might be a big mistake, he’d told her. But I can’t think of anything else I can do. I didn’t make the kind of grades you did, Ann.

They’d already been broken up for a while when she’d driven him that day, yet they’d remained close. On a whim they’d once moved to Portland and worked hotel jobs and lived in a downtown apartment. Ann had found a job as a hotel operator. For once she wasn’t under pressure to recognize people, and in two weeks she knew everyone by the sounds of their voices. When she worked graveyard shift she would sneak in some precious reading time. James had found a position working as a bellman, and always had a good story for her when he got off shift.

After a year they concluded that the city life wasn’t something they’d ever grow to enjoy. They couldn’t sleep well without the lull of the ocean outside, drank coffee until their hands shook and bit their nails. It was difficult to save money and the air could get so dusty from never-ending construction projects that they developed rattling coughs. But that wasn’t all of it. There were other things in the city that reached into you, gave you chills. To Ann it seemed as if there were an unnatural amount of people loitering on the street at all hours and sometimes they’d stop what they were doing and watch you, as if they were taking notes. Until Ann brought it up, James hadn’t paid them much attention. They live around here, he’d told her-do you think they want to stay inside their crappy apartments all the time? Ann had felt a little foolish when James told her that, back before he’d come around to the idea of scraping up some funds to move to some place on the coast, so long as it wasn’t anywhere near his father.

During their stint in the city Ann had learned to push her fear down, knowing that James would have worried about her if he’d known how terrified she’d felt. She’d been through so much, having to deal with her mother’s disappearance and seeing her stepdad sent to prison for holding up a string of liquor stores and community banks. But on the night James was mugged in front of their apartment, it was Ann who’d quietly packed and loaded up his pickup with only their suitcases while James lay on the bathroom floor moaning. She’d insisted on driving the hundred-some miles west, worried that he might lose an eye if they didn’t get to a hospital soon. They’d arrived at the Buoy City clinic just after the morning shift change. By then he was really out of it and she’d had to half- carry him inside.

He was kept overnight for observation. So out of it that Ann doubted if he’d even heard her talking to him. Her aunt came and took her home, and the next morning James’ mother and younger brother did the same for him. While James recovered, they saw little of one another and soon it felt as if their year in Portland had never happened and they were back in the exact same places they were before they’d left. There were numerous attempts to revive what they’d shared, but it was never the same after that. New tensions never let up and they’d begun to argue. After a while Ann couldn’t help imagining that a foul spirit from the city had followed them back to torment them. James’ mother, who’d always been fond of Ann, had changed the most. She seemed to believe that Ann had been responsible for the idea of moving to the city and almost getting her son killed. As Ann began to feel less welcome in James’ home, she gradually stopped visiting altogether. A few weeks later they found themselves dating other people.

She left the joint untouched, closed the ashtray and started her car. A dark shadow had swallowed the bay. Rain rumbled over the metal above her like a stampede of well-fed mice. The wind reached below her and lifted up the car so that for a second the front wheels spun with no road below them. They weren’t kidding; this is going to be a serious one.

The 101 cafe was open at all hours and drew a steady flow of long haul truckers and local deliverymen. Town regulars camped in the booths toward the back so they could keep an eye on the action at the counter where unlikely folk were sometimes forced to interact. A trucker who’d been awake for two days straight, for instance, might offer a compliment to a tourist’s wife before realizing he’d crossed a line. And depending on the subjects involved, such collisions of civility or lack thereof were known to restage themselves in the back parking lot. But as each troublemaker who walked into the 101 had gotten an opportunity to spend some time with the sheriff, such excitement was rare anymore. Word had spread quickly. You either agreed to play by Dawkin’s rules or stayed clear of his county. It was that simple.

Ann took a booth near the front where she could keep an eye on people coming in. She rarely went out to places where a lot of people gathered. It was hard to keep track of them all, and sooner or later she’d make a fool of herself. People she was supposed to know would think she was ignoring them. Or worse, she might not recognize some guy she once went out with and begin a conversation with him. Things could get awkward very fast.

When a doctor told Ann she had face-blindness it had made perfect sense. She’d gone through a period of chronic headaches and undergone all kinds of tests. Physically they couldn’t find anything wrong with her, no signs of trauma. She simply couldn’t recognize faces. They all looked the same to her in memory, smudges of skin and tooth and shadow, as differentiated as a beach of gray stones. What Ann did recall were the clothes they wore, how they styled their hair, their hands, whether they carried a certain scent or if they had bucked teeth. Voices were important too. She’d learned to tell people apart this way, and most of the time her system worked.