Kiki at the Shore

After three days in the car, 1334 miles from San Clemente to Lakeside, Kiki and her brothers spilled from the station wagon and ran to the water’s edge, hopping like cartoon characters every time a bare foot found a sharp rock. They had only just pulled into the spot next to the three-room cabin where they would spend the summer. Her grandmother had turned to them a few minutes ago, still on the highway, and said they needed to help unpack before thinking of anything else. Olive watched them now, running through the cherry grove toward the tiny beach near the dock. She wasn’t angry or surprised.


Two of those days were in the desert. After the climb out of the basin, over Cajon Pass and onto 395, Kiki saw the world go the color of alkali. She liked the brief change at Little Lake, the big hotel on a rise, the cattails waving next to blue water. But mostly the day resembled Owens Lake, drained off years ago to slake the thirst of Los Angeles, a lake dry and flat now, a place the Navy tested weapons. She looked forward to their lunch stop in Lone Pine, where she had a grilled cheese sandwich and a coke. She looked forward to passing that guard house north of town, at Manzanar. It was the only building left on land that once held in thousands of Japanese. Soon they would reach Bishop, the Travelrest Motel, swimming until closing at the municipal pool. Then the California Café, where they always went for dinner. The next day meant Tonopah for lunch and slot machines. If the kids were good, they would each get a silver dollar and a roll of nickels on the way out of town. The desert ended, more or less, on the other side of Twin Falls, Idaho. They all marched to the middle of the Snake River Bridge and looked five hundred feet down. Then they returned to the Jordan Motel, its new pool, the restaurant across the street where the waitress, no matter how large the party, memorized everyone’s order.

Kiki breathed easier when they reached the mountains. While her brothers complained about the curves, she sucked in the pine-rich air, and took in the roar of the Salmon River rushing out of the Bitterroots. Now the world was green again—as green as your eyes, her grandmother had said. Timothy and alfalfa grew everywhere along the bench. Every time her grandmother saw a white horse, she would touch a finger to her tongue, moisten the palm of her other hand, then stamp the spot with a fist for good luck.

Soon enough they were in another time zone, Montana, and everyone in the car found a new landmark to point out during the last hundred miles of the trip. The Evaro Hill. The pullout where they’d taken pictures with the Mission Mountains rising up behind them. The bison range. Ninepipe Refuge. Just before Polson, Flathead Lake appeared over the crest of a hill, and they all fell under its spell again, dropping into the basin past the golf course, the cottages, the tiny downtown before they began the last thirty miles up the west shore. Her brothers talked about the first things they would do when they got to their cabin. Start putting my fishing rod together. Get into my swim trunks and jump off the end of the dock. This is when their grandmother warned them not to disappear too fast.

As it turned out, Kiki and her brothers simply threw open the car doors and ran in the direction of water. Once they reached the shore, they stood there without words, looking east at the Swan Range, far across the lake’s surface and beyond. They watched a skier slice by. They watched Howie and Puddles quack and scurry away from them around the boathouse. No one got wet. Instead, they kicked a little at the gravel on the beach. One brother picked up a piece of driftwood. Another named the owners of three boats in their slips, and thus three of the families who would be staying in camp at the same time. After a few minutes, her brothers drifted back toward the cabin.


Kiki looked at the Swan Range again. Miles and miles of blue began at her feet and stretched to fill the space between them. Her eyes followed the line of the mountains north until they reached another range, then another, and then finally, through light haze, the peaks of Glacier Park. Ten years from then, in November, she would drive up there to watch, in sub-zero fog, bald eagles feeding on spawning salmon. She would hike the Avalanche Creek trail all the way to a frozen lake, aspen leaves suspended in its ice, at the base of a cirque. She would step across a fresh grizzly track on the way back to her car. Now Kiki took two brief steps into the water, and she knew where the cold water had come from.