Congregation

The party on the boat raged until afternoon the next day, and then ended abruptly when Agnes warned them of the Coast Guard ship. It ended for her, at least, because the captain powered the engines without warning and veered too sharply and nearly capsized, and in that moment she fell into the Salish Sea. The rest of them escaped, with enough stuff on board to get them all arrested and the captain’s boat confiscated. They saw her fall, she knew, because they threw an emergency raft in after her.

For a moment she felt the silence of the depths and the exhilarating shock of cold. But she couldn’t stay submerged and erupted to the surface, gasping for breath, and tasted diesel smoke as the yacht surged away. She wrestled with the slippery raft in the violent wake and finally righted herself. Lying backward, arms and legs splayed, she felt ridiculous in her elegant clothes.

There was no afternoon sun, just a vague glow in the gray-smeared west. She began to shudder uncontrollably and this also seemed ridiculous to her. Her arms and hands trembled like a condemned salmon. Her teeth chattered like a drunken clam. I’m going to die of hypothermia, she said to no one, but she heard it and the voice was comforting. She started paddling with arms backward, flailing against the chop and whitecaps and made no progress. Finally the tide arrived and lifted her on a massive, lifeless swell and cast her toward a tiny island. She saw a white patch on the beach, like an accidental daub of paint on a dreary landscape. She paddled toward it and reached the barnacle-sharp rocks of the shore.

It was a snow goose, stocky and solemn. It watched her from a safe distance. She tried to stand up and slipped on seaweed-wrapped boulders and fell, gashing her elbow. She crawled to rest on a greasy log. She kicked away a cluster of plastic bottles so she could put her feet in the sandy gravel. She and the bird watched each other. Across the bay a shotgun boomed three times. The goose winced. It raised its wings as if to alight and she saw that one wing came at a grotesque angle, so the bird put the wings away.

I guess we’ll both have to start over in a new land, Agnes said. The bird didn’t think this was funny. But it helped her to talk. She said, Okay, this is probably serious, this situation. What’s wrong with people? The bird stared. Its pink beak had black, downturned edges, like a frown a child would draw. She sensed disapproval and added, So it’s my fault? The goose took a step toward her and paused, one foot mid-air. She leaned toward it, hand out, and the bird jogged away.

There was a survival kit in the raft and she managed to make a fire from oak leaves and trash she found on the beach. She found a signal flare and wedged it into the waistband of her skirt. Fog moved in with the tide and stole the last light of day, leaving only a halogen glow from every horizon. The snow goose stood, frowning, just at the edge of the firelight. She looked at it and said, What do you want? Then she watched the bird take two steps into the light and she realized she had no plan.

I’ll find us shelter, she said. Otherwise we’re doomed for sure. She left the warmth of the fire and searched the stubby forest that persisted between the beach and the bluff of the island. The tide had left many gifts. She selected a large metal can that had once held popcorn. It seemed large enough for the goose. For herself, she found a sheet of tar paper and a fertilizer bag. Back at the fire, the goose ignored the can. She stoked the fire and pulled the trash blankets over herself. Later, the goose lowered its breast to the earth and laid its head along the injured wing and slept.

The goose woke her at some deep-night hour when the bay was silent and the tidal flats were visible in the false light of the refinery. The bird made peculiar sounds, a sort of high-pitched rubbery honk, as if a boot were pressing down on it, rhythmically. She sat up and watched the goose, neck extended, making that nasal bark again and again, and then pausing to wait with a blank eye as the solitary call echoed over the miles of mud and water. Later, in half-consciousness, she couldn’t tell if she dreamed she heard geese answer from across the bay. It was a muttering conversation, like a couple arguing over a grave decision while a city sleeps.

Very early, when the eastern sky had begun to glow through its shadowy gauze and the hiss of traffic rolled across the bay, she rubbed her sore body and discovered that the goose was gone.

Well, she said. The thought of appealing for a rescue exhausted her. People weren’t helpful. It was easier when the bird was there to distract her. She stood up, perplexed. Then she saw the goose. It was at the edge of the scrubby woods, standing perfectly still, staring at her.

There you are, she said. And then she said, What a stupid thing to say. And then she said, Well maybe it’s the only true thing to say. The goose honked loudly. There was a response across the bay--a lilting chorus of calls, a harmony of thousands. She approached the bird and it walked into the forest. She followed it and the bird continued, down a path that smelled of saltwater, wet wood, and decay. Finally, the bird reached the base of the bluff, stopped, and looked back at her. I see, she said, and the bird forfeited itself into her arms.

She marched up an acute path of switchbacks. With each step, sandy soil fell away from her foot and threatened collapse of the bank. The bird was silent but warm, and she could feel its heart beating, three times a second. Once the goose opened its beak and exposed a large serrated tongue. It was like a reptile in her arms. She was a primate.

The top of the bluff gave way to an open plain of grass, no larger than the roof of one of the mansions she sold. A pure green canvas with only the daub of color she and her goose gave it. The bird’s heart raced and its muscles tensed. She set it down and it collapsed to the earth, wings now slack, head pulled into the shoulders, eyes closed, panting. Then it was still: the feathers separated, shit appeared under the tail feathers, and the whole structure surrendered to entropy.

She sat on the grass and rubbed her eyes and realized, once again, that she would have to formulate a plan. Could I eat this goose? She asked silently. Aloud she said, Am I supposed to eat you now?

Then the end came. The chorus of geese approached and she saw the flock over the water, whorls of white dappled goose flock, calling apoplectically and forming a sloppy vortex over her island and then landing, one after another, with a muscular slap of wings hovering over feet extended delicately, then striding a few paces before grazing. She was surrounded by geese, all babbling and braying as they tore at the grass with their pink beaks and reptilian tongues.

A warm breeze came down the bay with the rising of the sun and the clouds parted in a few spots, revealing a blue ordinarily reserved for soft fabric. In the light that came down to the water she saw the stark white of the yacht. She stood to wave them over and saw, on the other side of the island, the Coast Guard ship, trolling slowly.

Agnes calculated that she could, conceivably, slide down the bluff and get across the beach and swim to the boat--all out of sight of the Coast Guard. They had come back for her, after all. She saw a colleague wave to her from the deck and she waved back. But the woman continued waving in a frantic way, not beckoning. She saw then another colleague, who she had dated only once, stand on the deck with a raised shotgun. The geese took flight and called out in alarm, flapping in confusing disarray.

Oh for fuck’s sake, leave the birds alone, she said. She flapped her arms and ran in small circles, shooing the geese. When they were gone, the man dropped the gun and made a dramatic gesture of frustration. The captain wheeled around slowly, coming into the shallow water. He dropped anchor. She wouldn’t have to swim--she would probably cut her feet on trash and barnacles but that was it.

But Agnes turned and looked where the Coast Guard ship was tacking away, still on the other side of the island, perhaps abandoning the search. She drew the signal flare from her waistband and fumbled with it, finally figured out the mechanism and pointed it into the morning sun, directly over the Coast Guard ship, directly into the patch of blue before it closed. Then she fired it and heard, as if in a choral response, the congregation of geese across the bay.