by Cristobal Rendón Acosta
“I don’t know about this.” Something in my gut doesn’t want me going back in the water. I glance at the dock above hoping a lifeguard or worker spots us. But when Lance tugs me along into the sinister-looking waves, I follow obediently. I can’t say no to him. He smiles back and tells me not to worry, so I don’t. We swim the length of the dock until we’re next to the garbage barge. Lance helps me grip the side. Manny and Sophie are already on board, crouching behind piles of trash bags. They reach out and pull me the rest of the way. I take a moment to rest, lying on my stomach with my face pressed on a deck as rough as cement. Lance flops on board next to me and smiles. “See, there’s nothing to worry about.”
We crouch-walk along the side of the barge to the front, avoiding big roaches, used ice packs, and hiding whenever the voices of men working on the dock get too close. “Isn’t this crazy?” whispers Sophie next to me. Riding the barge back to the mainland was her idea. Her strawberry blond hair, short bangs, and giddy smile make her look more like a model boarding a cruise ship than a twenty-something stowing away on a floating garbage truck. I nod back, but not in full agreement. I’m still mad at her. She’s the reason we missed the last boat home–she just had to have that funnel cake. But her giddiness is infectious, and I start to become excited to stow away on this barge.
We reach the front and sit down, Lance falling next to me. He lets his legs dangle over the edge and puts an arm around my shoulder. I nuzzle my face in his chest and smell the lingering scent of sand and sweat wafting off of him and mixing with the sea breeze. I instantly feel calmer. His presence grounds me, distracts me from my own floating thoughts. I try to think of him and not of what I saw today. Snorkelling together, we dove beneath Lover’s cove and fed fish of every color: blue fish that disappeared if they stopped moving, red fish that looked like flecks of embers, and yellow fish that glowed like tiny suns beneath the water. But my wonder led me too far and I swam further than the rest.
I hit open water and something in me changed. The sea floor dropped away and I found myself staring into the abyss. I floated uselessly over a void so profound, so full of depth that I didn’t know if I was above or below it. I felt as if it were watching me, the emptiness, the void, pulling me in as if it were alive. And from its deepest reaches, a gurgle of bubbles emerged like a growl. I raced for shore and stayed on land the rest of the day. But, as much as I want to forget it, the emptiness I witnessed is all I can think about, even as exhaustion begins to press down on me.
I’m afraid to sleep. I know I’ll dream I’m back under, staring at the daunting weight of nothingness. But finally my eyelids surrender to the heat around my eyes, and the last thing I see before sleep lulls over me is Manny and Sophie holding each other Titanic style as the barge pulls away from Catalina Island.
◊◊◊
Sophie’s shrieks wake me. I couldn’t have been asleep long, but already night has fallen. I can barely see through the darkness. I blink a few times and my eyes adjust enough to make out Sophie reaching over the barge and yelling “Manny.”
“Did he fall in?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” answers Lance next to me, “He was there and then he wasn’t.”
Sophie reaches over the ship’s edge, ready to jump in. I hold onto Sophie to stop her, but she’s bigger than me, and I can feel her struggling free. Lance is frozen, standing as if watching from far away. His stillness makes me panic and I lose it. “Lance, help!” He nods once, as if he only now noticed us, and helps pull Sophie back on deck. “We need to get help, Lance, now!”
“Yeah, yeah, okay,” he says and together we drag a kicking Sophie to the back of the ship.
The control room is empty. The entire barge is empty. I stare down at the glowing navigation panel thinking that maybe, just maybe, I can steer us to land. But which way is land? My breathing gets hard and shallow and it feels as if something hard is pressing down on me. My panic makes me frantic and I start smashing every button I see. A whirring fills the room and bright floodlights flicker on over the barge’s deck. “I’ve never been so happy to see garbage,” says Lance with a sigh of relief. Sophie quietly looks out on the deck. I can hear a deep gurgling sound.
Beyond the trash, a body floats in the water. “Manny,” says Sophie, in a whisper. The body bobs, almost as if waving, before disappearing. We all watch, waiting for it to resurface. My eyes are so fixed on the spot where the body disappeared that I don’t realize the barge is tilting. I see water slosh over the stern. Sophie starts screaming for Manny again.
The ship is sinking quickly. By the time I reach the door, the water is up to my waist.
“We have to swim,” says Lance, his skin so pale from fear that he looks like a corpse.
“Which way?” My voice shakes with panic.
“It doesn’t matter, just swim.”
Lance opens the door and bobbing garbage bags flood in. We waddle together, hand in hand. I can feel the barge fall away with every step until it’s gone completely and I’m left treading water in a sea of waste. The flood lights flicker beneath the surface for a second before going out completely. In the darkness panic takes me; I can feel the pull of the emptiness beneath. Lance pushes a large garbage bag away from me and tugs me along. I reach out for Sophie but I find nothing.
“Lucile!” Sophie calls out for me. But before I can yell back I hear a gurgling, a splash, and then nothing at all.
“Soph-” Lance calls out, but I stop him.
“Do you hear that?” I ask. From the darkness below we hear a gurgling sound. I feel the pull of water beneath me as I’m dragged under. I feel the cold void surround me as I become a part of it. I feel the pull of water dragging me down, then I feel nothing at all.
◊◊◊
When the barge pulls into San Pedro Pier it sounds a long horn that wakes all of us. Both Manny and Sophie get up from where they collapsed and disentangle their arms and legs. Lance nudges his chin into my hair and rubs my shoulders. “Almost home.” he murmurs.
“Look at that,” says Sophie as we pass under the Vincent Thomas Bridge. It’s green and lit with blue lights, and it looks like it’s a mile high. I wish we were higher. The shine of the harbor lights makes the murky water look like black ooze.
“We can jump off before the ship docks and just swim to one of the piers.” Manny says to Lance.
“No. No more water!” I don’t mean to yell, but even the sound of waves crashing into the barge’s low haul reminds me of that sinister gurgling. “Please, let’s just get off once the ship pulls in. What’s the worst they can do?”
“Yeah okay, sure,” says Sophie. Lance gives me a worried look, but Manny just shrugs.
The barge pulls into the southwest slip of San Pedro harbor, next to a tugboat. We wait until the ship is still before walking its length as casually as four stowaways can. A worker standing on the tugboat watches us step off the thin gangplank and onto the dock. I can only imagine what we look like to him. Beautiful Sophie in a yellow bikini under her sheer sweater, shirtless Manny with his glowing brown skin, tall Lance, also shirtless, and me, wearing a one piece that can’t be seen beneath Lance’s shirt. The man looks at us, then back at the garbage barge as if hoping more women in bathing suits might step off.
We walk for almost a mile along the dock to where Lance parked the car. All the while, Manny talks about the large fish he almost caught with his hands back in Lover’s Cove.
“Oh man, you’ve got to see it. I was this close. Sophie snapped a pic, I think.”
“Sure did!” Sophie smiles and waves the tiny waterproof camera strapped to her wrist.
“I still don’t get why we had to get back so soon. We should have stayed another day.”
Sophie elbows Manny to shut up and flashes me an apologetic smile.
“It’s okay.” I say, “I’m still not sure what came over me. I just needed to get off that island.”
Sophie nods sympathetically as if she understands, but Manny just shrugs.
“Shotgun!” yells Sophie when we finally arrive at the Catalina Express parking lot. She races Manny to the car, and in my joy of finally getting away from the ocean, I start running too. Sophie plugs in her mp3 player and chooses one of her intensively curated playlists. “Let’s see, past twilight on a summer night… I think some Bonobo, yes?” The car slowly thrums with the downtempo, electronic music pulsing out of the rear speakers.
Lance pulls away from the harbor and onto the hilly streets of San Pedro. I let out an audible sigh of relief when Lance turns onto the 110 freeway and the ocean begins to disappear behind us.
I turn to Manny and I see the floating body bobbing in the water.
“Hello, earth to Lucile, you in there?” Manny waves a hand in front of my eyes and they refocus.
“Yeah, just tired,” I say laughing it off. He doesn’t believe me, but he turns back to staring out his window anyway. I stare out my window too, letting the deep bass melodies of Bonobo pull me away from sea. I watch as the landscape changes, from long stretches of warehouses, to the tall lights of downtown L.A., past the Hollywood hills, and into the Valley with its scattered trees and shopping centers. The uneasy feeling doesn’t leave me until Lance pushes his small car onto the 14 freeway and I can feel the motor struggling up the San Gabriel Mountains.
Even in the dark with only their silhouettes visible, the sharp lines and rough edges of the mountains satisfy me. Like a kid, I trace their lines with my eyes. We pull into the Antelope valley almost a half an hour later.
Lance drops Manny and Sophie off at their apartment in Lancaster before turning back around towards Palmdale. We’re finally home. Lance steps into the bathroom as soon as I open the door and I flop onto the bed and close my eyes, begging for sleep and for this day to be over.
But my ears prick at the sounds around me. The sound of water flowing through the pipes bleeds through the thin walls. Lance flushes the toilet in the bathroom and the sound of it throws me on my feet and out the door. The water is everywhere and I can feel it coming for me. I can see the void beneath the ocean reeling its head miles above land and coming down to crush me. I run, further and further into the desert where no street lights shine. I run, and when I can’t run, I walk. Still, I hear the gurgling of the ocean, the emptiness of everything pressing in on me. I walk until I step on rocks, then I climb. Always away, in the direction I think will take me further inland, further away from the Pacific and the empty void underneath.
