Pier 99

Summer, 1984: Seven years old. Stranded in rising water. Alone.

He said he’d be back in a bit

The log rolled under my feet. I wheeled my arms for balance and leaped to the next before I could sink into the cold Columbia River.

Seven years old and invincible.

We lived in Pier 99’s caretaker house on the riverbank, close enough to the Interstate 5 bridge that it cast an afternoon shadow over the brick exterior.

West was the Portland Expo Center, where a smart kid could slip into car shows and comic conventions. South was Delta Park, where I spent entire June days watching Klamath, Paiute, and Warm Springs tribes hold their powwow with dancers, drumming, fry bread, and art.

But the real adventure? That was in the other direction.

The interstate crossed from here to Hayden Island, then into Washington.

Our house was close enough to chip rocks into the water from my bedroom window and watch the heavy industrial and recreational traffic passing day and night. Every year they dredged the shipping channel through the middle of the river. A train of barges and cranes scooping mud from the riverbed.

It was no place for a kid, and I had the run of it. Especially in the summer, which meant freedom and get the hell outside and don’t come back till almost dark.

School was out. Wrestling was over for the season.

Endless days to explore.

I met Charlie the week we moved in. An older man who owned an outfitter’s shop on the first floor.

I didn’t know anyone was below us until I emptied the vacuum canister out my bedroom window, raining dust over his walkway. After my mom’s boyfriend made sure I understood my mistake—one more reason to stay away all day—I went down to apologize.

Charlie was kind and his small quiet space overflowed with canoes and books and things that made my curious eyes sparkle. I would stare at intricate maps that lined one wall while we talked. He knew a lot about the river. He answered my questions with patience between sweet earthy puffs on a pipe that he would produce from the pocket of a chunky-knit cardigan.

The log beneath me dipped.

Old Douglas firs collected between the docks and embankment. Smooth and slick with algae and moss. Some were thin, others thick as a barrel. Some long as a man is tall, others like telephone poles. They floated together, riding every undulation. If you were brave enough and quick, you could hop from one to another and make your way to the other side of the dock.

If you weren’t careful, you could slip through them and you’d never resurface. The current would sweep you under the dock and you’d disappear.

I didn’t think about those things when the owner’s son showed up with his fiberglass two-man skiff.

He was maybe twenty-five. Old enough to do whatever he wanted, which seemed to be hanging out on boats with cute girls and drinking beer. His dad owned Pier 99, which meant the marina, showroom, our house, and Charlie’s shop. His dad also coached our wrestling team at the athletic club he owned across the city.

I hopped off the end of the last log and on to the dock.

“Hey.” He grinned. “Want to go out to the sandbar?”

Hell. Yes.

You could see the sandbar from the docks if the river was low. A pale strip of sand right in the middle of the shipping channel, half a mile away. Charlie explained it once. “That’s a sandbar, not an island,” he said. “The tide comes in from the ocean and the river rises. When it goes out, the river drops. That’s why sometimes you see it and sometimes you don’t.” I nodded with fascination.

He pulled up to the dock. I stepped in, careful not to tip it over.

The engine coughed back to life with a wisp of blue smoke and the sharp smell of two-stroke oil. We skipped across the water, slapping the surface. The river felt enormous.

I watched the green back-end of a big barge moving away from us and under the bridge. It pushed between the massive concrete supports. The barge shrank to a small rectangle.

On the far side of the river was Hayden Island. Its sprawling Jantzen Beach was once home to the nation’s largest amusement park. The ‘Coney Island of the West’. They tore it down, before I was born. It was a mall, now.

Wind blew through my hair.

I felt cool as all get out.

We approached the bar. A long teardrop of sand with small tufts of grass at the far end. As long as a football field, but thin. He cut the engine and the boat scraped onto the sand. I got out and took a few steps.

“Cool, right?” He grinned. “I gotta go, but I’ll be back in a bit.”

Wait, what?

But he had already pushed off and was ripping the pull-cord of the motor. He threw me a two-finger salute and turned back toward the docks. The sound of the engine faded as it zipped away.

I closed my eyes. Water slapped the sand. I breathed in. No stench of a wrestling mat with years of sweat ground into the vinyl. No ripe locker room. No sauna heat burning my nose, cooking me in two layers of sweats sandwiching a plastic suit.

I rolled tension out of my shoulders and stood.

After a while, I opened my eyes. Alone or not, this was an adventure. My own private island. I was Robinson Crusoe. I was Tom Sawyer.

I walked to where the dock pilings met the sandbar. They stretched toward Jantzen Beach in rows. Many had collapsed or snapped, leaving jagged tops. Low stumps had their tops rounded by the river. Others towered at least a dozen feet above my head. A creepy forest of things long abandoned.

At the water’s edge, I found drowned logs and rotting planks. Whole trees trapped by the current and choked against the pilings. A sunken tangle of green and brown faded to black in the depths. It looked like the entire pier had collapsed and sunk right where it stood.

I stepped back from the water and looked around. Other than these old pilings, it was bare. No driftwood or rocks and only a tuft of grass. Sand and dirt. I found a spot to sit and drew boobs in the sand until the sun dipped behind the bridge, turning the sky a muted grayish blue.

That’s when I noticed the water. Once at the far end of the sandbar, it now engulfed half. The sand vanished beneath the rising tide. I stepped back toward higher ground.

He should have returned by now. He said “in a bit,” right?

Water soaked my shoes as it rose. The sandbar shrank to a strip of about twenty feet.

I stepped back.

Fifteen.

Another step.

Ten.

I froze.

The shipping channel. Right there. Here. Dredged several stories deep. I’d been playing right on the edge, oblivious to the drop. I stared down into the mud and black. My knees wobbled—dizzy and unmoored. That about-to-puke feeling rose in my throat.

I’d felt it at the top of the Astoria Column, too. They tell you not to look down, but I always found looking up to be worse. I’d backed against the wall at the top of the column, pressing my palms flat against it. I wanted to fall to my knees and crawl.

Out here, there was nothing to back against. Nothing to press my hands to.

The water reached my calves.

It was dark enough for streetlights to flicker on. The universal signal that it was time to come home. Whatever delayed him, he had to be back soon, right?

Headlights streamed in both directions on the bridge. So many people going somewhere. None of them had any clue a kid was standing on a disappearing piece of nothing as the river swallowed it up.

Kids on the island would be sitting down to dinner. The last stragglers, pedaling into their driveway.

I looked down at my legs disappearing into the water. The current broke around them. Every rising inch challenged the friction between the soles of my sneakers and the sand. I looked back up to see something in the distance.

Red and green lights. Yellow-white lights blinking out of sync. A bright white glare behind it all. It was rounding the bulge of Tomahawk Island. A barge.

The lights grew brighter as it came closer. I could see something piled at the front and something else at the back.

It moved slow. You could outrun a barge on a bike, but movement on the river was deceiving. I barely had time to think about it before I was waving my arms above my head.

No acknowledgment. It kept coming and I was running out of distance and time. Could the tugboat even see me over the barge?

The bow pushed past, displacing water to either side. The pile became a hill of boulders caked in half-dry mud. My heart thumped as they passed overhead.

The sandbar felt smaller with each wave it sent at me. A faded dark blue wall blocked the sky. I craned my head back. Old truck tires dangled overhead, threaded on rope loops below the deck’s edge. Only a thin purple-black band of sky remained above.

Those flashing yellowish lights cast a soft downward glow over tight lines of rivets. Rust ringed their thumb-sized heads.

I wanted to climb out of myself and escape. This steel behemoth loomed over me, blocking out the world. It creaked and groaned under its own weight. It came so close that it could drag me under. Suck me beneath. Churn me up in the dark water. I’d never find my way back to air.

The barge continued. Wave fed on wave.

The equipment passed overhead. A sleeping mammoth in weathered yellow paint strapped down with chains. The bucket arm curled down like a trunk. Hydraulic arms rose on both sides like tusks.

I fought buckling knees.

The string of tires swung out then back against the hull with an echoing thud.

The tug pushing it had much brighter lights. It squatted low and blocky, like a bulldog. A skirt of tires wrapped around it and a massive wedge of black rubber on its nose. The diesel engine rumbled. Almost growled. Something high and sharp whined beneath.

I waved again. Desperate. Nothing. I was a small unlit thing at the edge of his vision.

I squinted my eyes and shielded them from the blinding light with my forearm. The wheelhouse rose up with windows glowing red from within. A bright orange life ring hung below.

“Help!” I screamed.

It growled at me, sending vibrations through my core. Propellers whipped the water into disorienting white caps that made feel like I was moving.

Thick black smoke chugged out from two huge stacks. It settled to grey, punching the air with the sharp oily smell of a long-hauler.

Another growl and it shot a choppy vortex of waves at me.

First wave plowed into my waist and I stumbled.

Another hit before I could get stable.

Then another.

The water came in pulses, faster and faster, spreading from the thrashing propeller.

I tried to plant my feet wider, but the water was too high and the sand shifted.

A wave caught me full in the chest. Another hit. The water pushed and pulled. I stumbled.

I was floating. Kicking.

The wake lifted me and dropped me. Lifted and dropped.

My feet couldn’t find the sandbar.

Another wave rolled over me and I was flailing toward the pilings.

No time to worry about impaling myself on their jagged tops or being swept into that underwater tangle. I paddled hard, arms plowing trenches through the water. A final wake lifted me and pushed me closer.

I jerked my head side to side, finding one of the taller pilings coming at me. Too fast. I reached my arms out to brace against the impact.

I hit hard.

The corner of my head cracked against the piling. Pain drilled through my skull and rattled through the rest of me. My vision went white, blurring at the edges. Tears came and I blinked through them.

\Water rushed into my nose and my mouth. The water stung my eyes. I shook my head, trying to clear it, but everything swam.

I struggled to grab anything, but found nothing. Decades in the river had smoothed the pilings slick. I ricocheted off and drifted toward three shorter spiky ones. The wake softened, but the current still pulled me toward them.

I fought my way out of the long-sleeve shirt I was wearing. Soaked and heavy, I hoisted it above myself. As I reached the nearest piling, I whipped it out as high and far as I could. ‘USA Wrestling’ unraveled down the sleeve in my hand as the other sleeve snagged the craggy top. A tall spire of wood spiked through the fabric.

I reeled myself in on the shirt, careful not to let it slip loose.

I sucked in air hard and bit down. Made myself stop crying, even though nobody was there to see.

The pilings were too wide to wrap my arms around and too slimy to climb. I wrapped the sleeve around my wrist and held on, treading water. My soaked shoes and socks made each kick a struggle. I tried to use one foot to strip the shoe off the other, but they were tied too tight.

I could keep afloat, but for how long with my feet in anchors?

I kept treading.

My ribs, arms, and shoulders started to ache. A bruise striped down my forearm, where I’d absorbed impact with the timber. The knuckles on the hand grabbing the shirt were scraped and red. I had four dark marks on the same bicep, but I already had those.

I couldn’t stay like this. Nobody was going to see a head bobbing in the water in a field of murky timber.

Should I swim for it? The Columbia River had a fierce current. You weren’t supposed to swim near docks. The river could pull you under, trapping you in the support structure.

Could I make it to shore? Not a chance. It was so far away and was a steep muddy bank that couldn’t be climbed. Between here and there? The shipping channel dropped to over thirty feet deep.

Hayden Island wasn’t much better. Even if I cleared the old docks, the current would rip me away.

My head throbbed where I’d hit the piling. The pain stacked up waves. My heartbeat drummed.

The current could pull me down river. Nobody would see me at night. Would it slam me into the bridge supports or carry me past them—eighty miles out into the Pacific?

At least that would be away.

I clenched the sleeve tighter, digging nails back into my own palm. Water squeezed from the fabric. Had to hold on. One more minute. I can suffer anything for a minute.

The other way would take me toward the Jantzen Beach side. A maze of docks, moored boats, and houseboats. My only chance was to stay afloat long enough to grab something—anything—before the river dragged me under. Then, maybe, I could pull myself to safety.

Something brushed against my leg. Then something else. Brushed or nibbled?! Probably just trout. Those little guys were nothing to worry about. Yet, my mind flashed to the dead sturgeon we’d found last season. Prehistoric creature with studded ridges along its sides. Bigger than any fish had a right to be.

I forced my eyes to focus. Running lights appeared in the distance. As they neared, I could see it was a recreational fishing boat. The kind you see mobsters throw people off in movies. Music playing. They were close enough. If I screamed, really screamed, they might hear me over it.

I opened my mouth.

Nothing came out.

What if they brought me back and he found out I’d needed—that I couldn’t handle—

My throat closed up.

The boat went by. Its wake hit me, water filling my mouth. It tasted like dirt, moss, algae, and fish. The boat slowed, pulling into a dock at one of the marinas.

Too late.

I still wanted to scream for help, but they’d never hear me now. And if they did, they’d have no idea where the sound came from.

In the distance, the enormous red “Waddles” sign glowed with white and yellow neon announcing “EAT NOW!” Close enough to read, too far to reach. From this angle, I could not make out the hands on its big clock. Across from it, the Pier 99 sign glowed, marking home. The tall sign lit up every night through my bedroom window. A spire protruded from the top of the atomic-age sign and had a large red orb spiked onto it.

I searched the shore for Charlie’s shop, hoping against hope to see a light. Sometimes he stayed late, stepping out to watch the river while smoking his pipe. Maybe tonight would be one of those nights. Maybe he would scan the water and catch a glint of white skin and dark hair bobbing with the waves.

The shop stayed dark.

Something I could see never felt so far away.

I touched the knot where I’d hit the piling, winced at the stinging pain, then felt it split with each heartbeat. The water kept getting colder. Cold enough that it felt like fire. My teeth chattered hard enough to hurt.

He’d forgotten me.

He went back to doing whatever twenty-five-year-olds do on summer evenings. Forgot he left a kid standing in the middle of the river. Nobody could see me. Nobody could hear me. Nobody knew I was here.

Or what if he hadn’t forgotten? What if something happened? His Jeep could be wrapped around a pole.

The shirt cut deeper into my wrist. My arms shook from holding on. I tried to adjust my grip but couldn’t find a better position. Each kick took more effort than the last. My calves cramped. The cold fire was in my bones now.

One more minute. If I could hold on one more minute. Maybe he’d remember. Maybe he’d come back.

I counted to sixty. Started over. Lost track. Started again.

Just one more minute.

My arms shook so hard the sleeve started slipping from my grip. I wrapped it tighter around my wrist, but my hands were too cold to grip right.

One more minute. That’s all. Just one more.

I needed to rest. Close my eyes for a second. Gather strength before I tried to swim.

The pulsing in my head distorted my vision. I couldn’t think straight. Couldn’t remember if I’d already counted to sixty or was starting.

One more minute.

I knew I’d have to swim. I knew I wouldn’t make it. But clinging to this piling by the tether of a shirt, waiting to pass out from exhaustion or cold felt worse.

But I couldn’t let go. Can’t isn’t a word. Had to hold on.

One more minute.

The high buzz of a small outboard motor cut across the water. Distant, but getting louder. I stayed as still as I could, afraid that if I lost my read on the sound, it would veer away. I listened for it over the rhythmic lapping of water, my chattering teeth, and the blood pounding in my head.

The engine cut to idle. A flashlight beam scanned across the water. I let go with one hand and splashed the water over and over, trying to scream. The light swept back across.

It stopped.

Found me.

He navigated between the pilings. Cigarette between his lips, beer bottle wedged between his knees as he worked the tiller.

“Grab on,” he said, steadying the boat against the current.

I let go of the shirt. My numb hands strained to grip the edge of the boat. He had to grab my wrist and haul me partway over before I could get my legs in. I collapsed into the bottom of the boat, water pooling around me. When my lungs stopped fighting for breath, I pulled myself up and leaned back against the side of the boat.

He picked up his beer by the neck, took a pull. “Sorry man, lost track of time.” He nodded the bottle toward another one wedged by his feet. “Want one?”

I shook my head.

I couldn’t get words out. Every part of me ached. I wiped my eyes. My throat hurt.

He reached into a cooler and tossed me a Coke. “Here you go.”

The cold metal can feeling warm in my hands. Climbing onto the hard fiberglass seat, legs numb, calves aching. Water dripping off me, pooling on the floor.

We rode back. Engine noise and wind. I shook all over, muscles firing off on their own. He steered, taking a slow drag off the cigarette between his lips like it was any evening on the river.

Please. Let everyone be in a good mood. Let tonight float by. Let me slip into the house and go to bed without anyone noticing.

My guts tightened.

The docks appeared ahead. We pulled up. He tied the boat to a cleat and held on to the dock to steady the boat. I stepped out onto Pier 99’s worn planks. Red paint flaked loose under my step. Something solid under my feet. He got out after me. He reached out and patted me on the back.

“Sorry.”

I nodded.

We walked the gangway. It seemed steeper than normal and it felt like each step might snap the tight tendons in the back of my calves.

We reached the concrete at the top of the bank. I watched the windows of my house for signs of life. He lobbed his empty beer bottle into a silver trash can with a clank. He gave me a thin smile. I nodded back.

He set off down the hill, toward his Jeep. I stood alone, swaying. I closed my eyes and breathed. That’s when I realized I left my shirt behind, dangling limp from the top of a piling. I hoped nobody would notice it missing.

I lumbered across the bank. The stairs at the end of the house zig-zagged up to the utility room. Through that, the kitchen and a sharp right into my bedroom.

I dried off on the bottom step. Pulled my sneakers off and chucked them down—thud, then a sopping wet squelch. Skinned the socks off my feet. They felt too light, like I’d been walking all day with sand-filled leg-weights velcroed around my ankles. When I stopped dripping, I climbed the stairs, careful to avoid creaks. Eased the back door open and slipped past the dryer into my room.

We never talked about it. Not that night. Not ever. I didn’t tell anyone.

What was there to say? I was fine. It was done.

More than forty years have passed.

I don’t think about it much. Not every day or every month. Maybe not even every year. But sometimes, lying in bed in the middle of the night, I’m back in that water. I swear I hear it rushing over my head. And I remember. That slither down my spine. Not from remembering the cold or the water. From understanding how close I came.

How easily I could have just disappeared.

But you don’t need water to drown.

Coming next month: The Horror of Consensus