Thirteen
WHEN I CAUGHT up, he stopped walking, but he didn’t turn. “Don’t follow me.”
“I have to follow you.”
“I’m taking a walk.”
“I can tell.”
“I need a moment. To myself.”
“That’s not really relevant.”
“Do you really think you’re my girlfriend or something? Don’t follow me.”
“Do you really think I’m your girlfriend? I’m not following you because I want to. You are my job.”
At that, Jack started down the gravel road again—heading very purposely toward nowhere, as far as I could tell.
I let him get about a hundred feet ahead, and then I took a deep breath and followed.
When Jack said he was taking a walk, he wasn’t kidding. We followed the tire ruts in the road through a cow pasture, over a cattle guard, past a rusty metal barn, and down a long, slow hill into a wooded lowland overgrown with vines.
Was I dressed for an excursion like that—in my embroidered sundress with bare ankles?
I was not.
Every hundred feet or so, I had to shake the rocks out of my sandals.
Really wishing I’d changed into those boots now.
Did Jack know I was following him?
He did.
Whenever we came to a gate, he’d unlatch the chain and wait for me. Then, wordlessly, once I was through, he’d relatch it, and take off walking, and I’d wait politely until he’d reestablished our distance.
I even walked in the opposite rut from the one he was using, out of courtesy.
The road descended deeper into the woods, and the grass got taller, and the path got more overgrown, and just as I was trying to remember what poison ivy looked like, we came to a tumbledown, rusty, barbed-wire gate.
Past it, the forest opened up clear to a wide, blue sky, and I realized we’d made it to the riverbank.
As I got closer, Jack was looking me up and down. “Are you kidding me with that outfit?”
I looked down at my bare legs. “I have boots back at the house.”
“You should be wearing them.”
“Noted.”
Jack shook his head. “Never come down to the river with naked ankles.”
“To be fair,” I said, “I didn’t know that rule. I also didn’t know we were coming to the river.”
Jack turned and looked at the distance ahead. The road stopped at the gate. From here to the riverbank was just tall grass—and weeds and brambles and thistle bushes. And let’s not forget poison ivy.
Jack squatted down and turned his back toward me. “Climb on. I’ll give you a ride.”
“I’m fine, thanks.”
Staying crouched down, Jack started counting off all the things in that grass that could come after me: “Sticker burrs, armadillos, stinging nettles, red ants, black ants, fire ants, poison ivy, blackberry brambles, black widows, brown recluses, copperheads, rattlesnakes, water moccasins…”
He waited for me to revise my answer.
I hesitated.
So he added, “Not to mention feral hogs, bobcats, and coyotes.”
Honestly, he’d had me at “armadillos.”
“Fine,” I said, and climbed on.
Jack hooked his arms under my legs and stood up fast enough to make me dizzy—so I clutched him tight. Then he launched back into that patented Jack Stapleton walking pace I now suddenly knew so well.
Riding was nicer. Maybe he’d carry me back.
At the riverbank, the forest dropped away, and so did the earth. Jack stood at the crest of the bank for a minute as we both took in the sight of the river down below and its endless sandy beach.
“That’s the Brazos River?” I asked.
“Yep.”
“It’s wider than I thought. And … browner.”
But Jack didn’t respond. Just launched us down the bank until we made it to the shore.
There, he dropped me pretty fast, and walked off toward the water.
He was heading vaguely north, so I decided to head vaguely south and give us both some space.
It was probably two hundred feet to the water itself, and I let my head tilt down as I walked and marveled at all the different kinds of rocks peppering the sand: brown ones, black ones, stripy ones, bits of animal bones, petrified wood, even fossils. Not to mention driftwood, an occasional tangle of rusty barbed wire, and a notable number of old beer cans. I could see why Jack wanted to come here. Across from us was a high bank with nothing but grass and sky, and all around us was the endless breeze that flowing water makes, making it feel like we were miles and miles from anywhere.
Which, of course, we were.
At the river’s edge, I kicked off my sandals. It was a warm day, and all that jogging to keep up had left me a little hot. The water was clearer up close—and, as I dipped my feet, it felt great. Cool and swirly with refreshing eddies. It felt so good around my ankles that soon I was sloshing out a little further.
I lifted the hem of my sundress. I really wasn’t planning to go past my knees. I was just going to cool off for a minute and enjoy it, honestly. Another few steps, and I was going to turn around. But then, a few things happened all at once.
As I took my next step, I heard a sound like maybe Jack was calling my name, but it was so muffled by the wind, I couldn’t be sure. I turned to look, but as I did … the floor of the river disappeared.
There was just … nothing for my foot to land on. And so I lost my balance and splashed down into the water.
It’s always shocking to land in cold water when you’re not expecting it, but there was something more shocking about the water in that river.
It had a current.
A really strong current.
A current strong enough that when I hit the water, I didn’t bob back up to the surface with a kick or two … because the water tugged me downward.
It all happened so fast.
I was sloshing through the water—and then, within seconds, my head was going under.
It actually gives me shivers to think about it now. How close I came to drowning.
But just as it happened, before I had time to panic, I felt something hard as metal clamp around my arm and haul me back up.
Jack.
He yanked me out and toward him like some kind of machine, grabbing me around the waist and clamping me with an oof to his chest, then dragged me back to the bank so fast, we both stumbled and fell onto the sandy shore.
Did he land on top of me like we were in From Here to Eternity?
Yes, that happened.
Was it in any way romantic like that?
Um. No.
As soon as he could, Jack scrambled up and stomped away, leaving me drenched, and stunned, and coughing on the sand.
When I caught my breath, I said, “What was that? A riptide?”
“Are you kidding me?” he demanded, his jeans soaking wet from the thighs down. “Did you just wade out into the Brazos? Did that just happen?”
I stood up and tried unsuccessfully to brush the wet sand off my legs. “Was I … not supposed to do that?”
“Nobody’s supposed to do that! Don’t you know how many people drown in that river every year?”
“Why would I know that?”
“Everybody knows that! Never swim in the Brazos.”
“First of all, I wasn’t swimming. And second—no. That’s not a thing everybody knows.”
But Jack was ranting now. “And why? Why can’t you swim in the Brazos? Because it’s sandy at the bottom, and so the current makes eddies, and the eddies carve caverns in that sandy floor of the river, and the current swirls around in there like liquid tornadoes—and if you’re unlucky or stupid enough to get sucked into one, you’re done for.”
“That’s some pretty specialized knowledge, there—” I started, coughing some more.
“So,” Jack went on, like I wasn’t even talking, “when idiots decide to go swimming or fishing or wading in that water, the next thing they know, they’re pulled into the undertow. Whole families die trying to save each other, one by one!”
Did he just call me an idiot? I tried to decide if it was worse than being the epitome of ordinary. “So. Not a riptide then.”
I eyed the water, so tranquil looking from here. I could still feel the pull of it, like some liquid death magnet. Suddenly there were shivers prickling my arms and legs. “Scary,” I said, almost to myself.
My calmness just seemed to make him madder.
“Scary?” Jack yelled. “You’re damn right! What the hell were you thinking?”
“I don’t know,” I said, turning to him now. “I was hot? The water felt nice?”
“You were hot?” he said, in a tone like he’d asked me why I was drinking gasoline and I told him I was thirsty.
He went on. “Do you have a death wish? Do you? Because here’s why it’s called ‘the Brazos.’ From ‘los brazos de Dios,’ which means ‘the arms of God’—and people think it’s from thirsty travelers who were so grateful to find water, but it’s actually because it drowned so many people that it’s where God collects their souls.”
Yikes. Okay. That took a dark turn.
I will grant that Jack was conveying an important safety tip. But, I mean, really? I was obviously half-drowned and super-shaken. Did he have to yell?
I don’t know about you, but I can only get yelled at for so long before I start yelling back. Jack wanted to yell? Fine. I could yell, too. I could yell all day.
“Why are you yelling at me?!” I yelled.
Another first for me—yelling at a client.
“Because!” Jack yelled back. “You’re going to get yourself killed!”
“Not on purpose!” I yelled back.
“That doesn’t matter once you’re dead!” Jack yelled.
“People wade into water all the time!” I yelled. “It’s a totally normal thing to do!”
“Not in the Brazos!”
“But I didn’t know that!”
“And if you go under, then I go under—because then I have to go in after you!”
“So don’t go in after me!”
“That’s not how this works! If you die in the river, I die in the river! And I really don’t want to fucking die in the fucking river!”
For a second, I had no response. I didn’t know what to say to that. And in that second, I realized something else: I was shaking. A lot. Hard. From someplace deep in my core.
Most likely, it was fear.
Though it didn’t feel like fear.
But maybe I’d just forgotten what fear felt like.
Usually, the antidote to fear was preparation—but I hadn’t been prepared for anything about this week, from watching my job mutate into something I didn’t even recognize, to moving in with a bunch of strangers, to losing my best friend, to winding up in the middle of some hatefest between Jack and his brother, to being called “ordinary,” to almost drowning, and—now—to getting yelled at like I hadn’t been yelled at in years.
It was a lot.
Suddenly, it was too much.
“What am I?” I demanded then. “Some kind of historian of the Texas waterways? How exactly am I supposed to know that this is a river of death? I’m just living my life in the city, trying to get to London, or Korea, or anywhere at all that’s literally not Texas, and suddenly I’m having to move to a cattle ranch and act in this crazy reality show with you and your family? I didn’t want this job, I didn’t ask for it, and now I’m trapped in it with no escape for weeks on end! So maybe you could give me a heads-up if I’m about to accidentally kill myself or anyone else—”
And right here is where my voice broke.
Right here is where I lost hold of “angry” and my emotions just kind of crumbled. By the time I finished with “instead of just yelling at me out of nowhere like an asshole,” my voice sounded broken, even to me.
I froze, and so did Jack, as we both registered that I’d just called my employer an asshole.
I would have liked to march off right then in a gesture of self-respect, but everything was trembling, including my legs.
Without even really thinking, I reached up to touch my beaded safety pin. I just wanted a quick hit of that tiny sparkle of comfort I always got when I felt the beads.
But it wasn’t there.
My neck was bare. The necklace was gone, too.
“Hey,” I said, looking down. “Where’s my safety pin?”
“Your what?”
I pawed at my collarbones, like I might find it if I kept trying. “My safety pin. With the beads. It’s gone.”
Had it come off in the water? Was it somewhere on the beach?
I started searching the sand.
“That colored safety pin you always wear?” he asked, forgetting we were fighting and starting to look, too.
“It must have fallen off,” I said.
I paced the beach, retracing all my steps. I’d been warm on the walk down, but now, after the shock of the river, I felt the opposite. I was drenched, and cold, and I couldn’t stop shivering. But I didn’t care.
As we looked, Jack’s entire demeanor softened.
“We’ll find it,” he said. “Don’t worry.” Then he added, “I’m really good at finding things.”
I looked up, and when I did, I realized just how vast that beach was—compared to a safety pin. This beach was like infinity. We were never going to find it.
And then I did what anybody might do, I guess, in that situation.
I started to cry.
Jack didn’t even hesitate. He closed the distance between us and wrapped his arms around damp, trembling, uncharacteristically shaky me and kept them there a minute. Then he stepped back and took off his flannel overshirt, put it on me and buttoned the buttons, and then pulled me back into his arms.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and now I was hearing his voice muffled through his chest. “I’m sorry you lost your safety pin, and I’m sorry you almost drowned, and I’m sorry I yelled at you. I should have warned you. It’s completely my fault. You just scared me, is all.”
Was he stroking my hair? Was Jack Stapleton stroking my hair?
Or was it just the wind?
He held me for a long time like that, there on that beach. He held me until my tears had dried up and I’d stopped shaking. Another first: The first time a client had ever hugged me—and the first time I’d ever allowed it.
And as mad at him as I still was, I also really didn’t mind.
He seemed to have a knack for it.
JACK WOUND UP carrying me piggyback all the way to the house.
At first, he was just going to take me up the riverbank and through the overgrown grass—just back to the gravel road.
But once we got there, he just kept on walking.
“I’m good now,” I said, my legs dangling. “You can let me down.”
“This is my workout for the day.”
“I can walk. I’m fine.”
“I like carrying you. I might start doing it all the time.”
“I know how to walk.”
“I’m sure you do.”
“So put me down.”
“Don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“Mostly ’cause it’s getting dark, and lots of things that bite come out at dusk. You won’t be able to see where you’re stepping. And you’re barelegged, like an amateur.”
“We’ve already established that’s not my fault.”
“So what I’m doing right now is chivalrously protecting you from danger.”
“Ah.”
“Also, I feel bad for making you cry.”
“You did not make me cry.”
Jack gave a little have it your way pause. Then he said, “Also, it’s fun.”
“So you’re really not going to put me down?”
“I’m really not.”
Of course, as we went, I couldn’t help but assess safety aspects of the property. That was my brain’s default activity. I made mental maps of the layout, including potential hiding spots for bad actors, potential escape routes in emergencies, and areas to monitor.
All, of course, before Jack told me that his parents never locked their doors at night.
“Oh my God, you have to make them do that!”
“I’ve been trying to for years.”
Not good. I’d be highlighting that in tonight’s log.
And yet, a lot of my usual anxieties felt unusually muted, there on Jack Stapleton’s back. Maybe it was the rhythm of his walking. Or the velvetiness of his flannel shirt enrobing me. Or the solidness of his shoulder under my chin. Or that cinnamon scent that seemed to follow him everywhere.
Or maybe it’s just objectively hard to worry about anything when you’re getting a piggyback ride.
I could feel the muscles in his back shifting and tightening with each step, especially as we made our way uphill. I could feel him breathing through his ribcage. I could feel the warmth of his body where we were pressed together.
I won’t lie. It was nice.
Too nice, maybe.
“You really can set me down,” I said.
But nothing doing. “We’re almost there,” Jack said.
So I guess I had no choice but to stay there and enjoy it.