Chapter Text

Day 3

Tide woke up on this morning without an anxious radio message, or a plume of smoke in the blue, blue skies. Fog rolled through the conifers and the tower creaked in the wind, and it was his first truly easy day. He knit, he explored some new caches, he found a collection of Leonard Cohen cassets lodged in the back of his bookshelf, and familiarized himself such classics as Death of a Ladies Man and New Skin for the Old Ceremony. He also phoned a friend.

“So what are we meant to do out here when there aren’t fires and missing kids?” Tide spoke into the radio as he continued to rifle through the bookshelf.

“Watch.” Mark responded.

Tide flipped through an encyclopedia of Eastern American waterfowl, “Watch what, birds?”

“If that’s your thing, yeah”

“If I had a thing I don’t think I would be out here”

Mark paused, thoughtful “Maybe being out here is your thing? It was mine.”

Tide hummed. “You asked me why I’m out here, that first night.”

“Did I?”

“You did”

“To be honest, Waterboy, I was really drunk”, he laughed dryly.

“Well,” Tide leaned back against the side of the bookshelf, ” I guess I’m hoping I might find out what I want while I’m out here. Back home, my siblings said I was distant.”

“So you… ran off into the woods? Way to double down.”

“Well I- I needed space.” Tide didn’t wanna get into it, not yet. He reached for his basket of knitting supplies.

“Hm, don’t we all?” Mark chided rhetorically, and the conversation reached a lull. Tide started sorting his yarn by color, picking splinters out of it as he went.

“What do most people do when they’re out here?”

“Well, Cadillac is known for its Hawks. Maybe its time to pick up the binoculars?”

“No disrespect to the birdwatchers of Acadia, but I’m gonna pass.”

“You said you’re knitting, right? Make something cool.”

“Hmm, okay. What are your favorite colors?” Tide smiled.

Mark sounded shocked “My what? No- you don’t have to make me something just, something. I don’t know, Waterboy.”

“What?” Tide exclaimed, “I have all summer to make myself stuff, I’m working on a new sweater right now, let me make you a hat or something.”

“Fine. Surprise me.” Mark sounded over it, Tide didn’t push.

“Alright, I’ll get to work on your hat, or maybe socks!”

Day 9

Tide was sat along the slow part of Otter Creek, just south of his tower. The water was extraordinarily clear with a green-blue tint, yellow light dancing on the rocky shore. Pine trees cast long, wobbling reflections. He set up a pot of water over a small propane stove and waited for it to come to a boil.

As he waited, he saw a large shadow break through the trees across the creek, bushes crunching below it’s feet. Branches creaked as they parted, and Tide got a clear view of a female Moose, bending down to drink from the waters. He recalled the disposable camera in his pack, and tried to quietly pull it out quick enough to catch a shot of the large female across the way.

As he lined up the shot, he noted a glimpse of a young calf on the other side of its mother. He waited a few seconds as it crept up to the shore, knobbly long legs bending as it drank. Tide snapped the photo. Both their heads bowed, enormous fauna of the park, they peacefully shared lunchtime at the creek with him, or rather, he watched from afar as the pair shared the moment with each other.

In a few moments he was able to get the Beef Stroganoff started, pouring it out of its box into the boiling water. It felt natural to radio Mark, as he did nearly every day this week. They discussed favorite animals, parts of the park, ways to warm up on windy nights. Mark didn’t often start the conversations unless to comment on the sunset, weather, something tangible they could both experience. Tide started topics on whatever floated into his mind, like a patch of wild berries he spotted on a trail or his struggle getting used to the outhouses.

“What do you look like?” Tide was straight to the point.

Mark was always eager to redirect, “Good morning to you, too, Tide. I am dressed head to toe in green spandex and have a long twirl-y mustache.”

Tide was steadfast, brushing off the image of the grump he knew as some sort of green mustache creature. “Good morning! What do you look like?”

“Why do you care? Not like you’ll be seeing me any time soon, worried I won’t be pretty if we ever do happen to cross paths?” He snarked.

“No, I just think it would be easier to be able to picture who I’m talking to. I can go first if that makes you feel any better?”

“Nah it’s fine. I have uh- dirty blond hair, grown out from an old cut, kinda shoulder length in the back cause I keep it brushed out of my face. I’m a little sunburnt right now. I have a beard? This is dumb.”

“No, no, that’s good! Thank you. My turn?”

“No need, I saw you that first morning. I’ve got a telescope, could see you walking to that plume of smoke.”

“Okay- creepy peeping aside you have a telescope? How did you get that out here?” Tide tried to wrap his mind around lugging a telescope up these trails, no thank you.

“My second summer up here I brought it out, already had the rest of my things here from the year before, it was easy enough.”

“Your second summer? How long have you been working out here?”

“A while.”

“And your tips on entertainment end with bird watching?"

“You gotta find your own path, I can’t tell you what you want to do. Isn’t that what most people run off into the forest for? To find themselves?”

Tide’s mood shifted, he paused to watch the mother moose and calf retreat into the brush. “I don’t think that's why I came out here” he sounded somber.

“Whatever it is I’m sure you’ll figure it out, the forest has a way of helping lost people.”

“That’s one way to put it. I ran off when my family needed me, I’m not lost just a coward.” Tide could picture Elle’s face when she found him packing his bags, Whirlwind’s angry voice across the phone.

“Yeah, I get the feeling,” Mark’s voice was hushed now “Family?”

“Siblings.”

“Ah, no Mrs.Waterboy?”

Tide laughed weakly into the radio, “Not my thing.”

“What is your thing?” Mark’s voice had relaxed when Tide had called himself a coward, but was undeniably soft now.

“Not sure, but I still don’t think it is bird watching.”A smile made its way to Tide’s face, and his pasta was done cooking.

“You think that ghost, Ashe, was like for real?” Dakota asked William.

The boys sat in their shared cabin, rolling up sleeping bags and picking up trash. They hadn’t been able to participate in many of the recent activities since they were grounded, but had gotten permission to go on the final hike of the trip.

Will tossed Dakota a stick of deodorant, “Of course, how else could you explain that stuff? And the creature we saw at the estate?”

“Right, right. I was just thinking though like, we didn’t really see the creature, what if it was just a weird hermit, or something?”

“With many voices?”

“…yeah.”

“Maybe, either way it was unnatural.”

Vyncent popped in the door, “Hike starts in 15, you guys all ready?”

William sighed “Just about.”

Vyncent stepped into a triangle with Dakota and Will, already packed “I did some thinking about what we talked about, and I think I have a plan on how we stay in touch.”

Day 15

(Warning, this day will contain some descriptions of an injured animal. If that is not your cup of tea please skip to the next Day!)

Tide was making his regular rounds this evening, on the radio with Dan as he checked up on his poorly patched window and organized his things.

Dan recalled “This year's drought is ridiculous, I can’t imagine how it’s gotten this bad.”

Tide made his way down the stairs, planning on taking Gorge Path up to a nice spot in the valley where he could watch the sunset. “That’s why they hired me, right? Increased fire risk?” He gave one of the posters on the side of his outhouse a smile, it had a photo of a pair of ducks swimming with the caption True love leaves no traces, and neither should you! Properly dispose of all trash.

“Yep, Cadillac had been empty for a year or two but with these dry summers we need extra watchmen.”

“It’s hard to imagine this is a dry summer, the creeks and ponds out here are beautiful, let alone the beaches.”

“But no rain, no rain all spring, either.”

Tide hummed, and watched a woodpecker hop between trees a few meters ahead of him.

Dan continued, “So fire risk is at an all time high. We’ve been cracking down on campers, no smoking no fires no nothing.”

“Right, like those kids that were wandering around when I first showed up”

“Exactly! Speaking of, when the rangers found ‘em they were saying something about a ‘red creature’, you seen anything like that around?”

Tide sighed, it seemed he was getting Crazy Dan today. “No, I cannot say I have.”

He raved, “Cause that mountain really does have crazy things. Missing people, ghosts, all kinds of horrible stuff. I’ve got a book on it actually, a real history book. It’s a good read.”

“I’m gonna have to let you go Dan I believe I see some deer coming up ahead I don’t wanna spook.” Tide stated, flatly. There were not any deer.

“Okay buddy, catch you later.”

Not only were there not any deer, there was a shocking lack of sound through this area of the forest. The faint whistle of wind was as much as Tide could hear of nature, not so much as a rabbit around. He was about half way to the lookout, now. He noticed it passively, lost in thought. It was strange, as much as he appreciated Dan, the guy was hard to talk to at times. He imagined, though, that Dan was lonely. Being a nutcase in the middle of the woods, whose friends had left the watch, must’ve been difficult. Maybe imagining there were monsters out here was his thing, what motivated him and kept him busy.

The sky was orange with the setting sun, making all his surroundings blend into shades of brown and amber. Ahead of him though he could see, peaking out from behind a bend in the path and a few trees, a bright splatter that contrasted the rusty nature around it.

Red, red that grew as he got closer. The strong scent of iron came with it, and the soft huffing of a young moose calf. It moaned, pained, short, helpless cries as he got closer. Tide’s face crunched, his heart broke for the small animal. It’s mother no where to be found. It trashed as he grew near, head on a swivel and a few of its legs shimmying to try to scootch away.

The calf gave up once Tide placed a hand on it’s side, surveying what he could now tell was likely a broken leg, limply hanging, coagulated blood collecting dirt. He got the dismaying feeling that this calf would not, could not survive. The merciful thing to do would be to get some sort of big rock and- and put it out of its misery, but Tide was not that strong.

Tears collected in Tide’s eyes, “I am- I am really so sorry little one.” He slowly stood, brushing the back of his hand against it’s cheek. It’s round, dark eyes, looked up at him. They shimmered in the darkening sunset, long eyelashes fluttering, innocent. Tide turned his back to the calf, and walked himself home, cold in spite of his several layers.

The forest did not magically commission Tide to forgo his old flaws. He was the same man he was when he left home, and he had been in the many months before Shockwave’s death, who avoided his family and got lost in queer corners of New Haven, where no self respecting man found himself. He had long missed his duty to family, mercy, his own identity, to a weaker part that wanted softness and easygoing above all else.

He didn’t take that trail again for several weeks.

Day 34

Today was the day, the supply drop! Tide had drawn a star around it on his map, Cache 241, where he would get his supplies for the next few weeks. Toilet paper, food, that kind of thing. Dan asked him the week before if he had any special requests, and Tide was happy to hear that he would be able to get him some more yarn. He’d just finished Mark’s beanie and a matching pair of socks, and they agreed the day before to leave them at the Cache so he could grab them on his next trip down. The cache was up Murray Young, but not nearly as far as the telephone lines had been.

Getting new supplies was the closest thing to a reward out here, a little piece of recognition for his work. Dealing with creeps breaking into his tower, loose kids, and a weird boss, he deserved some new snacks. Tide got dressed with a pep in his step, and clicked on his radio for the morning with a refreshed feeling.

“Good morning, Mark!” The door to his watch station groaned as he shut it behind him.

“Morning. You seem, excited?”

“I am! Today is pickup day, I get new stuff.” He made his way down the stairs.

Mark scoffed, “Right I remember, I’ve just never heard someone so excited for cans of beans and some thin toilet paper.”

“What’s not to be excited about? I take a nice hike up Gorge and Murray, grab my things, and return back to my cozy little lookout, now with some new colors of yarn I asked Dan for.”

“I still can’t believe you get along with that creep, he makes me nervous. He’s shifty.”

“Mark!” Tide said with faux shock.

“What?”

“How are you, Mark from tower 4, who has never ever told me a thing of himself other than some minor details of appearance and the fact he carried a telescope up into the mountains, claiming poor Dan Lion is sketchy?”

“He is!” Mark laughed “He’s so sketchy. Maybe he’s the one who broke into your tower, looking for demons I bet.”

“Whatever. He is nicer than you are, anyway.” Tide grinned into the radio as he spoke and glanced over his map.

“Nice never helped nobody, but I’d argue I’ve been more than hospitable to you, Waterboy.”

“Oh really? If this is hospitable then I really do not want to get on your bad side- also, nice absolutely has helped people!”

“Like when? Being nice gets you cheated, that’s what I learned out here. Nothing but scumbags and litterers.” Mark shivered, verbally.

“Well I am not a scumbag or a litterer, and neither are you, so what are we?”

Mark spoke with a charming pretend drama, “You and I, Waterboy? We’re the worst of the worst, a couple of odious bastards roughing it in the most hostile environment on earth- Acadia National Park.”

A butterfly flew past Tide, landing itself on a white flower, “Right, real unsavory characters.”

Mark spoke with a fond inflection, playful. “You might not be rugged as I am, but you’re still a real threat behind that unimposing good-guy act.”

“I think if you knew me you might find I am pretty rugged!”

“Rugged? You? We must be thinking of different Waterboys.”

“Yes! I am a skilled hiker, camper, I can start a fire with nothing but twigs you know.”

Tide heard Mark laugh on the other side, “Alright, whatever you say, Waterboy. Hey uh, I gotta take care of some things. Give me a ring when you get to the cache.”

Tide shook his head fondly, “Goodbye Mark, Over.”

The next hour or so of hiking was nice, so nice that he stopped to crack open his journal and jot down a few things.

On the first page he had taped in the poem he found, and the next few pages were a mix of small still life sketches, journal entries, and pretty leaves. There was a doodle of what Tide pictured Mark to look like, a sketch of his view from his south window, between these two drawings he wrote a few of his favorite lines from the cassets he was listening to, a mess of “Chelsea Hotel” and “Field Commander Cohen”. Tide began to write:

Day 34,

I am sitting at the spot on Gorge Path with the large smooth rock and patches of ferns. I had a good talk with Mark today, he didn’t leave or get mad like he did the last time I wrote.

He made the innocuous mistake of asking Mark if he had any family back home. Mark exchanged a few harsh words, left the conversation, and was not heard from until 4 days later when he popped on to ask if Tide was properly stocked of poison ivy ointment.

I still do not understand why that upset him, maybe that is the problem. I do not really get Mark. I know he cares about the park, about his privacy, but not why. I also know he does not like questions. Maybe if I keep sharing, he will open up. Talking to him makes me feel better sometimes. He is funny, harsh, but funny. He makes rude jokes, I can just picture Magma’s face when he says them, Magma would say “Not funny.” and apologize “for me”. I feel less lost with him, he says that the forest teaches us things, maybe that is what the forest wants me to learn, that Magma does not decide what is funny.

Tide hiked the rest of the way up to the cache, now familiar enough with these paths that he checked his map maybe 60% less? He could stop to tie his shoe without checking his compass, and that meant significant progress.

He reached the yellow-orange box with glee, one hand holding his radio as the other pushed the right digits into the lock. He began to speak all sing-songy as he pried open the long awaited cache 241, “I’m here!”

He began to assess the goods as he waited for Mark’s response. The prospected things, cans of beans, boxes of pasta, dried seasoning (!), trail mix, and 3 spools of multicolor thread. One spool a mix of black and navy blue, the next white and teal, and the third solid red. He packed them into his bag.

At the bottom of the pile he spotted a small rectangle, a cassette? He picked it up, turning it around in his hands, and found that on one side, in big blocky handwriting, WATERBOY was written in marker. With it, a note,

You said you found an old cassette player and I had a few tapes lying around. Heres a few songs I thought you might like.

A mixtape, Mark had made Tide an honest to god mixtape. The image of lovesick teens passed through Tide’s mind, of crushes and gossip and passing notes. That’s not what this was, but Tide had never received any of those things, so he wasn’t what else to compare the gift to. For all Tide knew it may be a prank, or a tape of flute soloists. The weeks of near-nothing to accompany Tide but Mark, Mark’s rude jokes and unhelpful sarcasm that Tide wouldn’t trade for even a few extra colors of yarn, they were getting to his head. Making him imagine things that weren’t there. Maybe he was as crazy as Dan was.

“You there, Mark?” Tide asked tentatively, still a little submerged in thought.

“Sorry ‘bout that Waterboy, was climbing up one of these stupid rock walls, hands were full.”

“You made me a... mixtape?” He tried not to sound so stunned, he failed.

“Yeah, figured you were making me something I might as well give you something back.”

Right, the socks! Tide wrestled with his bag to quickly drop the beanie and socks in the tower 4 section. “So you hiked all the way up here? Your drop off is not for a few weeks, if you were gonna hike down anyway we could have exchanged gifts in person.”

“Wanted to surprise you I guess.”

“I am surprised, thank you Mark.”

“You got the Walkman on you? You should give the tape a listen before you go thanking me already.”

“I am sure I will like it, but no I left the player back at my station, too much to carry.” ‘I would rather talk to you on my walk back, anyway’ went unsaid.

Tide began again after a moment, “You ever think maybe Dan is just lonely? And he is making up all the stuff about hauntings?”

“Sure, I mean have you ever seen anything supernatural out here?”

“No,” He paused “well okay someone broke into my station- but I cannot imagine anything with supernatural powers would find a use for my spare lantern and a hoodie.”

“Well shit,” Mark sounded shocked, concerned, “and Dan didn’t even call it in?”

Tide sighed “No, he summed it up to a demon or something- and I was content thinking it was some drunk hiker or someone who assumed the station was abandoned. Though I guess it does freak me out, thinking someone could just break in like that.”

“Mhm, you could fight ‘em though, if they did, right?”

“I am perfectly capable of defending myself, yes.”

“Man. I’m surprised you didn’t pack up and go home, I would’ve.”

“Maybe that would have been the smart thing to do, but then I would have to go home, and that feels like defeat, I guess?”

“Defeat from… not getting axe murdered in the woods?” Mark chuckled.

“No my uh, the family I mentioned. They did not want me to leave. My older brother said I could not survive living by myself in the city for a week, let alone in the woods. He did not mean it, though, he is just… a brother I guess.”

“What, you can’t make your own decisions? Fuck that guy.” Mark scoffed in a way that lifted Tide’s spirits.

“I would understand if perhaps they needed my help with things around the shop, but they did not, not with work anyway. In all honesty, I would have had to leave either way.”

“Sounds like you made the right choice then, looked out for #1.”

It struck Tide that he never thought of himself as a “look out for #1” type of man, not even on the days he’d left Elle to work alone, or when Whirlwind had been taken into rehab for the first time and he had been “too busy” to help Seismic get him checked in.

Tide lamented his lack of self awareness, “At the time I did not think of it that way. Thought I was doing them a favor, getting my gloomy face out of the house and into a real job, a job where at least my little sister would not feel like she was babysitting me. I acknowledge now that the choice was selfish.”

Mark hummed “Not trying to make you feel bad, sometimes you gotta be a little selfish.”

“How can you say that? I left my family in grief to play park ranger for months, like me finding my thing somehow justifies it. I do not need you to trick me into thinking there’s any good in that. I acted selfishly, and that was wrong, and the fact I don’t regret it only makes it worse.” Tide’s tone slowly twisted into argumentative, his formal affect contracting and snapping under the weight of his words.

Mark was stern, but his attitude was hard to place “Needing some space doesn’t make you evil, especially not when it sounds like your siblings made you feel like you were just taking up space. Fuck ‘em. I may not share a home with you, Waterboy, but I’ve only ever seen you be frustratingly fucking nice. Maybe they just got too used to it.”

“You don’t know the whole story.”

“Then clue me in.”

“I don’t know you, Mark. You don’t know me, that much is clear. My family was all I’ve got and I fucked it up, and I don’t want to learn to be okay with being a bad person I want to be good at being good.”

“Fine, be a lonely fuckin’ saint, but no one’s gonna pat you on the back for feeling bad about the shit you do. Do good, or learn to accept that maybe there’s some shades of grey. But what do I know, I’m a bad guy playing park ranger in the woods.”

Tide didn’t respond. Anger and grief bubbled in his throat. Why’d he have to leave? To make friends with a cranky hermit he knew nothing about? To care if said man thought he abandoned his family in their weakest moment?

Mark spoke again, “I don’t think you’re a bad guy, but you’re right. I don’t really know you- and you sure as hell don’t know me.” he spat the last few words, a poison to them that Tide felt may lead deeper than just not knowing Mark’s last name.

The clawlike allure of Mark’s anger called to Tide like the cavern in Cave 452, locked behind a steel gate he wasn’t sure he’d ever find the key to. He wanted to find the good and the bad of it, what let Mark act so brazen and self-empowered that he could say and do things for no reason other than that he wanted to. Tide wanted to pick apart what made him carry a telescope into the mountains, ask Tide to hop for no reason other than to fuck with him, make him a mixtape and hike hours of his day to deliver it by surprise. Mark was a mysterious creature, Tide wanted to spend the rest of his summer understanding why that was.

Tide arrived back at his tower. He unpacked, making a point to leave the cassette un-listened to on his desk, and settled into bed without Mark’s opinion on the quality of the sunset that night.