By Katja Dillmann
Hawthorne Fellow 2011
___________________________________________________________
Three days into the trip, I undertook an experiment. The original plan was simply to wait until Chad noticed that we hadn’t touched and for him to bring it up, but every minute ate away at me and twenty-four hours into it I couldn’t stand it anymore, and I asked: “You know what?”
“What?” he asked, not turning around.
At that moment, Chad was standing on the red folding step stool, shirtless, his faded light blue shorts slipping low revealing his still pale white skin at the top of his butt crack. He was peering into the rocket box on top of the car, a convenient spot where we stashed some of our non-daily use items, handing me magazines. I stood looking at his back.
“It’s been over twenty-four hours since you touched me,” I said. I didn’t add: any type of touch – accidental contact, a poke with a finger, an excuse-me-you’re-in-my-way pat, a brush of hands while passing plates; but I thought it.
“I had just been thinking about that,” he said, and his flat affect made me believe it had never crossed his mind.
“Oh yeah,” I said, smiling, flirtatiousness creeping into my voice, “what are you going to do about it?”
“I’m in middle of a project.” His voice sounded hard, tinged with anger. The project was determining which Rolling Stone magazine he had read and which he had not read, removing the ones he had read from the rocket box by handing them to me to be used to start that nights’ bonfire.
“Oh,” I said setting down the magazines I was holding on the top of the cooler. I walked around to the front side of the van, set up one of the beach chairs and sat down. Dakota, my four legged shadow, joined me.
We had positioned the van on the flat spot, a ways back from the ocean’s high water mark, facing west. Behind the van were about one hundred feet of flat compact sand and then the dunes picked up, rolly-poly sand dunes, taller than the height of two people standing on each other’s shoulders.
While Chad arranged the van for living versus traveling, I had gone to gather fire wood in the dunes. During the traveling to living conversion items were freed from their bungee restraints. Due to the graded dirt roads, while driving everything needed to be battened down to avoid full-blown chaos, bungee cords and NRS straps were our preferred method. I had wandered a while looking for wood, intrigued by these beautiful dunes, only to turn around and be surrounded by walls of sand with the valley-like passage ways between them, forming my path in the unexpected maze I found myself in. I was so disoriented that my heart rate quickened and I had to scramble to the top of the nearest dune to get my bearings, to locate the water, to find west, to know which way to head back.
Mid-afternoon, the wind picked up. I hate wind. And I had never seen wind like this.
The wind picked the sand up from the beach, blowing it so hard I had to protect my face and eyes. Dakota being a Pacific Northwest dog didn’t understand the wind/sand combination and sat staring directly into it, head held high and proud, as if to defy the wind, mini- sand dunes forming by her tear ducts. I tried to bribe her to turn around, to put her back to the wind, but she was too stubborn and wouldn’t take the treat.
The blowing sand distorted the daylight. The wind forced sand into every crack and every crevice making it impossible to go out. The howling wind swayed Blanco, our van, from side to side, making it impossible to stay in.
We spent a day this way. And our nerves were worse for it. I suggested we head south; my reasoning was that it couldn’t be this windy all over Baja. Chad wanted to wait one more day because he heard the swell was supposed to be awesome. I suggested we hit this spot on our way out of Baja at the end of the trip. He said he didn’t want to plan that way, because what if we ran out of time or went back a different way and then he wouldn’t get to surf this spot. At this point we had nothing but time, and were already there. So we stayed.
The next morning was still. No wind and no waves. The ocean was dead flat. By 10 am the wind picked up again, working its way to an absolute fever pitch by Noon, subsiding to the point that the landscape looked like it was coming in as a bad picture on a television – wavy with static lines – by 3 pm. During this “lull” we attempted a game of two-person-one-dog soccer against the wind. This was short-lived entertainment, as the wind had the upper hand and we went back to being grouchy, cooped up in the Van.
At some point darkness fell and coldness came. Days in the desert are hot, but nights are below freezing. We attempted to cook inside the van. The stove was positioned on top of Dakota’s crate. The set-up beautifully designed so the side windows of the van lined up behind the stove. We tried cracking open the window directly behind the stove for ventilation and were greeted by sand. The sand forced its way in through the half-inch crack and once inside still powered by the wind, dispersed like shot from a shotgun. Chad got pissed. Between the fumes from the camp stove and the newest wave of sand in the car, he flipped.
“All my shit is getting ruined,” he snorted. “I might as well take the iPod and throw it into the sand myself.” He grabbed the iPod and slid open the van door, raising his arm, ready to launch the iPod into the all-encompassing black-sandy stew. The persistent wind was still whipping the sand in every direction, and the night was so black without the light of the lantern, one might mistakenly believe one had gone blind.
I grabbed his arm. “Don’t you fucking dare throw that iPod out there.” He turned his head and looked into my eyes. Even in the low light from the hand-crank-lantern I could see the defiance in his eyes.
Our eyes locked, my words hung in the air.
Then I was calm; ridiculously, unfeelingly calm.
And then as a surprise to myself, I launched the cutting board with the tomato scraps still on it out of the van door into the taunting, persistently-howling, all-encompassing black-sandy stew. The knife went next, then the travel mugs, all the while saying, “I’m so tired of this shit. I’m so tired of your shit.”
Chad, now calm as a clear day, said, “Fine. I’ll finish it off for good then.” He placed his headlamp on top of Dakota’s crate. The sound of the headlamp on the plywood, gave off a distinctive knock, his hand opening up to release the headlamp, dramatically slow. Chad stepped out of the van and into the night wearing nothing but a T-shirt, a black fleece vest, and cut-off shorts. Seconds after he stepped out of the van door the darkness swallowed him.
I shut the van door, forcing Dakota to stay inside. I re-cranked the lantern, hid all the knives and then opened the van door. I walked around the perimeter of the van. I could not see Chad. I could see nothing. There was just blackness, the wind whipping my hair, cutting my face.
I went back into the van, the door shutting behind me with a loud metallic thunk. I grabbed both headlamps, tied Chad’s down jacket around my waist, wore mine, cranked the lantern in the hopes that he could see the van due to the shining light, leashed Dakota, put her flashing dog light on her collar and headed off into the night calling his name.
The wind just stuffed his name back into my mouth, down my throat.
In my mind I kept confronting morning: alone on this stretch beach with Dakota, going into the dunes only to find his dead body. And I kept trying to figure out how on earth I was going to explain this without the requisite language skills. And I kept wondering where I would find the closest pay phone to call his parents. And all along I kept shouting his name, my voice only audible for moments.
And it seemed odd to me that this was how it was all going to end – his life, our relationship, in the desert over an iPod or not over an iPod, but yes, over an iPod.
I hiked into the dunes and was struck by taste-able panic that Dakota and I would get lost.
I headed back to the coast line, the water on my left making it certain that I couldn’t get lost.
Despite his anger, I thought, he was a rational being and had probably walked up to the abandoned corrugated metal shack and to hunker down for the night.
I had first seen the shack when Dakota and I hiked passed it on our first afternoon. It looked inviting from the distance, a corrugated metal shack perched on the edge of the cliff. But even in broad afternoon daylight it felt creepy up close. That first afternoon it creaked and swayed a little even without the wind. It was one room no bigger than 4 feet by 4 feet, the inside walls had been graffitied, there were a few empty bottles on the floor. Upon returning from our afternoon hike I told Chad about Dakota and my discovery. He said, “Yeah isn’t it cool.” He explained that he had been up to see it when he and James had been down the previous winter.
Now in the darkness, I followed the cliff’s edge to the shack, all the while calling, “Chad, please come back, please.” The wind simply took my calls, pulled them apart, and mixed them in to its own howl.
Not until we were feet away did the silver from the corrugated metal stand out from
the blackness of night. The shack creaked and groaned in the wind. I peered through the window. It was empty. A shock ran through me like a bolt of lightning.
Dakota and I hiked back to the van, my headlight fighting the night, her red dog light blinking away. I was calling Chad’s name.
Scared, cold, wind-whipped and hoarse I got into the van, shut the door with the same metallic thunk, and got down on my knees and prayed. I knelt in front of the bench of seats, my elbows resting on the seat, my hands folded, my forehead leaning into my index fingers, my crossed thumbs pressing into the bridge of my nose. I prayed, talking out loud, crying. I made promises that I believed I would keep in exchange for Chad coming back.
I went outside to try to light a fire in the fire pit, thinking that if Chad had wandered off into the dunes, he might able to see the light and know which way west was and where the van was.
I knelt down, attempting to keep the crumbled-up pages of Rolling Stone from blowing out of the fire pit while trying to keep a flame from the ‘flame thrower’ alive in the face of the howling wind. All I could hear was wind and sand on paper. All I could see was the pie plate section that my headlamp illuminated. Then Pedro barked. Pedro was Dakota’s new love interest and he wooed well. Since our arrival he had slept in front of the van door each night waiting for her to be released in the morning, and they were inseparable during the day. I thought maybe since Pedro barked and not Dakota, Chad was around the van. I walked around the van, pointed my headlamp out into the night. No one.
I went back to trying to preoccupy myself and pass the time, continuing my efforts to make a fire. Amidst the howling wind, I heard something behind me. I turned and my headlamp illuminated Chad leaning against the van. His arms pulled inside of his vest, the T-Shirt sleeves playing in the wind. I started sobbing.
I went to him, put my arms around him, put my head into his neck and cried uncontrollably, tears, spit, snot adding to the cacophony. I spat out that I loved him, I was so glad he was back, that I was scared. He remained motionless. I felt his hard chest against mine, keenly aware that he did not put his arms around me.
“You know how to find your way back to San Diego, why do you need me?” His voice was monotone. “Why are you crying?” he asked in the monotone.
It wasn’t until six weeks later that we found ourselves in La Paz having problems with Blanco. Saturdays seemed to be the day for car trouble.
It seemed to be the starter. And so it was that we found ourselves on a quiet tree lined street, residential, except for the VW shop being run out of Carlos’ Uncle’s front yard, where the heat intensified the stillness somehow.
Chad was still on the other side of the road in front of the VW shop with Carlos, trying to figure out a good time to return to get the needed part. Dakota and I were in the van; by now it was common place for me and Dakota to just be in the van together.
Due to the heat both windows were rolled all the way down. My feet were propped up on the dash board and I studied them – the red polish partially chipped off of my toenails, my feet dusty and tanned and leathery.
I looked up and across the street at Chad. Chad looked small next to Carlos and even more like a leprechaun than usual. He had strawberry blonde hair that when grown out was curly and had the texture of straw. That’s how I loved it, and how it was now. Usually however he kept it buzzed – military style, making him look very serious. His face was wide and flat with a nose that I found adorable from the day I met him. His soft brown eyes were big, wide and open – pools of melted milk chocolate. His face was covered in freckles and though he was red headed and pale when not exposed to sun, he could tan.
As I gazed across the street, I noticed Dakota shift her body weight. She saw something and looked as if she were preparing to jump out the window, something she had never attempted before. “Stay,” I said, a command we had been working on for a while. As I reached over to grab her collar, she jumped.
A dividing line started at the top of Dakota’s head, visually splitting her face in half vertically. The fur on the left side of Dakota’s face was two shades darker brown than the fur on right side of her face. The right side of her face however was split in half again, this time horizontally. The top half of the right side of her face was a light brown, the white of her nose creeping up into the light brown, leaving the bottom quarter of her face white.
Other than her face, her coloring was unremarkable: she had a big white ruff collar around her neck and the rest of her was light brown, with two white hind feet.
Almost instantaneous to her jumping, I heard the screeching of car tires and a loud thud. I looked out the window and watched as Dakota’s body was spit out by the back tires of a white car, launching her from the middle of the road to the side of the street. She bounced once, her head coming to rest on the curb, her body lying in the gutter; her screams bringing people out of their houses.
Until that moment, I had never seen Chad motionless in a time of crisis. Chad was a man made for triaging emergency situations. But now he stood above Dakota holding his head, his fingers showing through his red curls, simply saying: Dakota, Dakota.
We had adopted Dakota in the early Fall. Chad had seen her on petfinder.com, she looked little and adorable. We looked her up online several times over the next few days. We talked about whether we were ready to adopt a dog that young and had gone to the shelter to meet her.
She greeted us with all her over-abundant puppy energy, snuggling up on Chad and bouncing around the greeting room. But we left without her, deciding she was too little for us; that she required too much training, too much attention.
Chad claims he didn’t sleep at all that night. He said that all he could think about was that little puppy. We got up, checked online to see if she was still available and drove down to Family Dogs New Life Shelter forty-five minutes before it opened. We waited in the car for ten minutes and when another car pulled up Chad bolted out and stood directly in front of the door in the light drizzle to be the first in line.
The door was unlocked by the same dread-locked, sweatshirt-fingerless-mitten-wearing girl from the day before. Though once she unlocked the door, she didn’t open it. Instead, she turned and walked to her position behind the counter. Chad pushed the glass door open and we walked up to her. He grabbed the binder of dog pictures, and gave me that look – you ask her.
“Hi,” I said. “We were here yesterday and looked at,” I paused and reached for the binder. “Um, her,” I said pointing to Dakota. “Is she still available for adoption?” Chad stared at the counter.
The girl took the binder. “Yeah,” she said. “She’s still here.”
“We’d like to adopt her,” I said.
The girl looked at me. I looked back at her. She had a silver nose ring that I didn’t remember from the day before.
“Why didn’t you adopt her yesterday?” She asked.
“We had to think about it. We wanted to make sure we really wanted to adopt her. And now we know,” I said.
Nose ring, dread-locked, fingerless-mitten girl turned and looked Chad in the face as well, pausing.
“We don’t like to adopt dogs out to people who aren’t sure. We want to give dogs their forever home,” she said with a tone of superiority.
“That’s why we waited.” I felt a wave of heat sweep over my tummy and rise up my chest. “We’re sure and we would like to adopt her.”
She sighed, staring at me. I stared back.
“Okay,” she said, dramatically shutting the picture binder. “Let me help these folks and then I’ll be back with you.” She dismissively peered around us, “Can I help you?” she asked the family.
Chad and I took this as our cue and sat in the plastic chairs against the wall. His green hoodie was still pulled up over his knit cap. He clasped his hands, leaned forward, resting his arms on the tops of his legs. “I thought I was going to throw up,” he said. “I was so worried she wouldn’t be available for adoption.”
Without advanced warning, dread-locked nose-ring girl entered the room with Dakota wriggling at the end of the leash.
According to her adoption papers she was everything under the sun. We picked out the top two breeds listed and called it good: Austra
lian Shepard and lab mix. And with that she was ours; baby made three and we had our instant nuclear family.
Taking her home for the first time, Chad had to lift her into the back seat of the car since she did not know how to get in on her own. Now as Chad bent down to pick Dakota up out of the gutter, she bit him.
A young Mexican male, with sandy-blonde hair, who had come out of the house across the street due to Dakota’s screams, said, “You might want to try the vet,” in the most off-handed way. The resigned nature of his obvious statement made my blood run hot.
Chad carried Dakota to the van and placed her in her kennel. Carlos got in the driver’s seat, as if he had been asked. Carlos was heavy-set and middle-aged, wearing sagging khaki pants, which ironically made him look older and more heavy-set. He drove through the streets of La Paz grinding gears, running stop signs, causing cars to honk at us. Carlos shouted back at them. I was in Dakota’s kennel with her. I put her blanket over her and dipped my hand in water, moistening her lips. I talked to her holding her head, my body swaying and crashing into her as Carlos ground the gears, shouting at traffic. I tried to prop m
yself up on my elbows to avoid bumping into her.
“Dakota’s bleeding out of her mouth,” I announced from the back.
“Oh shit, oh shit,” Chad said and started translating for Carlos.
We got to the Vet and barely parked before Carlos leapt out, slamming the driver’s side door with such terrific force that Blanco rocked. Chad jumped out as well. He slid open the back door and started freeing the cooler from its bungee cords, pulling it out onto the sidewalk to make a path to Dakota’s crate. I climbed out of the back of the van. By now it was late in the afternoon.
The Vet knelt into the Vanagon to look at Dakota. The three of us forming a half-circle behind her, “She is taking her last breath now.” She said in English with an odd accent on the ‘th’ of breath. “She is having a heart attack. She is no longer conscious. No more pain.” All three of us were silent. I stared at her.
That’s it? I thought. You, with too much make-up, wearing a white lab coat, are going to stand here on the sidewalk in the hot, late, Mexican sun and calmly say that?
As I washed Dakota’s blood off my arm in the back room of the vet’s office, the Vet said to me, in English, “Even puppies go to heaven.” This set off a whole another set of uncontrollable crying.
In that moment the loss of Dakota felt like my failure – I failed to keep Dakota safe, I failed to keep the family unit intact.
I undid the structure and organization she imposed on our temporary vagabond lifestyle while our lives were being held together by bungee cords. I undid what held together our home.
Chad talked to the Vet, in Spanish, as to what we should do with her body. The Vet told him we were allowed to bury her on the beach.
The cooler and other miscellaneous items sat untouched on the sidewalk in front of the open Vanagon, looking oddly out of place. We loaded these items back into the car. Carlos took his seat behind the steering wheel, Chad got in on the passenger side and I took my seat in the back, but on the floor next to Dakota, my hand on her dead body and off we went.
Carlos made two more stops in search of the starter for the van. Chad kept telling Carlos in Spanish that we want to go bury the dog, but Carlos could not be swayed from his mission.
Finally, after dark, we followed Carlos to his house. Chad paid him for the work he had done earlier in the day, and then we followed his car, as he lead us once more through the unpaved backstreets, this time down to the beach. It was by the light of the moon and headlamps that Chad dug Dakota’s grave. In the meantime I fashioned a little cross for her from two sticks, bound together with fishing line.
We didn’t talk much. At some point, Chad looked up at me out of the hole he had dug, in the semi-darkness, I could see his face well in the moonlight. “Okay,” he said.
We walked to the car and slid open the back door, the smell of death greeted us. Dakota’s body lay stiff in her crate making it easy for Chad to pick up her head and front legs; I took her back legs. I bent down and buried my head in her fur one last time, her fur felt soft against my face. “It still smells like Dakota,” I said surprised, considering how the car smelled. Chad looked at me with a mixture of disgust and frustration. We lowered her into the ground.
We took all of her bedding out, washed the blood off of her blankets to the best of our ability, and hung them on the roof rack to dry. And then we silently made up our bed, pulling the seats out into their flat position, the top end of our bedding sliding up to Dakota’s now empty crate. Chad crawled into his sleeping bag and rolled away from me facing the window. He fell asleep fast and hard. The chill of the night air crept up alongside me in the space between Chad and myself. In those inches between us, filled only by darkness and cold, I felt the distance of the last six weeks.
Now there was no Dakota to bridge the gap. The van felt empty.
In the night I woke up feeling confused and unsure where I was, the van was shaking. In a tired stupor, I rolled over and went back to sleep.
Once daylight came, I awoke, truly alone in the van. I sat up in my sleeping bag and could see Chad sitting at the edge of the bay. As I walked toward him, I passed Dakota’s blankets we had hung out to dry, the bottoms shredded, all the bloodied parts torn out of them, the teeth marks suggesting stray dogs or wild coyotes; the shaking van explained.