Mindy Mejia - Leave No Trace

‘Do you really need that?’ I muttered as they boarded.

Bryce glared at both of us before releasing his grip on Lucas. ‘I don’t have any other patients who try to jump fences or sick their crazy fans after me.’

‘Lucas didn’t sick anyone on you. Anyway, that’s why we’re here before dawn. Crazy sleeps in.’

He grunted and stalked away. When I filed the incident report for Twin Ponds I’d specifically asked for Stan on the rest of our field trips, but today was Stan’s day off and none of the other orderlies had as much experience with Lucas, so we were stuck with Bryce.

Once everyone was on board Butch brought us into the cabin and gave a quick safety talk as we chugged out into the harbor and waited for the lift bridge to raise. The boat boasted a 3,000-horsepower diesel engine that could steer thousand-foot freighters with ease. Its two decks were full of lights, winches, and rope that an F-16 fighter jet couldn’t break. The lower deck cabin had only a single wooden bench for us to sit on, otherwise we could climb up to the open-air deck behind the glass encased captain’s bridge for better views. Butch pointed out the bathroom, which wasn’t a huge step up from the latrines dug at the Boundary Waters campsites and nothing like the facilities on the yacht-style passenger cruisers that catered to the tourists on Lake Superior. The tugboat, though, was infinitely safer, a controlled environment away from the general public. When I’d texted Dad at the beginning of the week, he agreed to take us out and even turned down a job to arrive back in port early. After the safety talk, Dad came down to the lower deck and showed us the map tacked up on one of the walls, pointing out their attempts to locate the Bannockburn , before moving on to describe the shipwreck of the Onoko – our destination for today’s cruise.

At the top of the hour, the lift bridge closed to car traffic along the peninsula and cranked up its metal scaffolding to the accompanying scream of fire alarm bells. The bridge was an icon, the symbol of Duluth and as far as alarm clocks went, a piercing start to the day. We filed out of the warmth of the cabin to watch the bridge rise. Bryce smoked a cigarette in the bow, legs wide and taking the slap of the wind head-on. Lucas watched in silence, absorbing the spectacle while Dad stood behind him and Butch’s head moved around on the bridge. The only person missing was Dr Mehta.

I let the wind blow me back to the cabin and found her braced on the bench, watching the cement canal pass outside the windows. She looked paler than normal, smaller. It took a few minutes, but I convinced her to come out for the sunrise. We cleared the canal and cruised along the shoreline while Butch pointed out landmarks on the loudspeaker that no one looked at. Instead everyone faced east, into the endless sightline that showed the curve of the Earth itself and watched in silence as the thick gray morning became infused with an illumination that seemed to have no source. A haze of clouds shrouded the water, but somewhere behind them the sun was rising. A shimmer of pink glanced off the waves and made the buildings on Duluth’s hillside glow. It was a sunrise with no sun, a morning without light, and before anyone could do more than huddle into their jackets and gaze around, it vanished and the day began.

I turned to Dr Mehta, eager to share the moment, but she was quaking against the rail.

‘I always get seasick. It’s not the boat or the water I’m afraid of,’ she admitted. ‘It’s vomiting in public.’

Biting my lip, I gave her a hesitant pat on the back. ‘Dad says seasickness comes when your body insists on being vertical. If you let go of that need, stop focusing on the horizon and what you think should be up or down, then the sickness will pass.’

She squinted across Superior, where the gray below met the gray above. ‘There is no horizon.’

I tried not to smile. ‘One less problem. Just try to remember: up isn’t up. Down isn’t down.’

Dad came over and, after hearing the situation, offered to take her back to the cabin. She accepted his arm, too queasy to even grumble about being led around like an old lady, while he told her about the Onoko ’s hull failure and spectacular flipping explosion and sinking, presumably to cheer her up. When Bryce took Lucas inside for a supervised bathroom trip, I climbed the stairs to the second deck and curled up beneath the sightline of the captain’s bridge, using it as a buffer against the unrelenting wind. The gales had begun.

Shivering, I watched the churn of the water until Lucas appeared on the stairs. Bryce’s head popped up behind him and I waved him off, agreeing to supervise. Negotiating the deck unsteadily, Lucas leveraged the winches and coils of rope to make his way to the bench and sit down. Silently he gripped the rails of the seat and I wondered if he was going to be sick, too.

The boat progressed up the shore where the sprawl of Duluth gave way to secluded mansions, towering homes sitting regally on the cliffs, and then we turned and headed into the open water toward the site of the wreck. Dad climbed up to the captain’s bridge and passed us without comment or hurry, seemingly immune to the blast of wind, the Arctic’s first attempt to take Superior.

As the shoreline receded, I felt Lucas relax and start to absorb the morning. This. This is what I wanted to show him, the moment I’d secretly hoped for when I planned these field trips with Superior lurking behind every outing – first a view from the hill, then a trip to the docks, now cruising over the water itself. Duluth lived at the mouth of this inland sea, at the whim of the water. We took the wind, the squalls, the snow, and the flooding. We took everything the lake gave to or inflicted on us, knowing there would always be more. This was a resource we could not exhaust. It wasn’t protected like the Boundary Waters, it didn’t sink quietly into your soul; it dominated everything it touched and we were the ones who needed protection from it. The water would always win, no matter if it was beating at the basalt cliffs that tried to contain it or reforging our empty bottles into lake glass as beautiful as gemstones. This gray wind-tossed water, raging at the gales, the water that sucked ships into oblivion, that roared so loud you forgot the storm in your head, this was what I loved most about Duluth – the absolute reign of Superior.

I didn’t realize I was shivering until Lucas slid over, closing the gap between us and slipping his arm around my shoulders. I stilled. Even the tremors died as I felt the length of him press into my side, offering his own body heat.

‘Your ears are red,’ he murmured, so close I could hear him above the wind and the roar of the engines. Too close.

I pulled away, putting distance between us. Someone was walking in the bridge behind our heads and Bryce and Dr Mehta were right under our feet. I should have joined them downstairs and ended the insanity of this stolen, frigid moment before someone discovered us, but not even that threat was enough to make me sever it completely. I threaded our gloved fingers together on the bench, trying to pretend I was watching the few gulls screaming overhead, fighting the immense pull of the air currents.

Lucas gripped my hand. I could feel him searching my profile but after a while – when I refused to do anything more than stare at the birds – he turned to the water. ‘The search party.’

‘What about it?’

‘I won’t lead them to him. I told you we had to find my father alone.’

I’d already explained to him several times that working with the police and the US Forest Service was the only chance of getting Congdon’s approval for the trip. It was the only door we could walk through. The problem was he knew part of the plan, but not the whole thing. I couldn’t share everything, not with staff and patients constantly prowling around our sessions. Here, though, where the wind whipped our words away, where there was no one to overhear, I took a deep breath and told him the rest.