Mouth of Mattole by Mike Bozart - HTML preview

And with a pair of royal-blue-plastic-paddle push-offs, their setting-sun-yellow, electric-pump-inflated, neoprene, elongated-pentagon-shaped, high-walled lifeboat is unmoored from the quickly-entering-total-shade sandy north bank along Conklin Creek Road in Petrolia (a small township in northern California). It had rained nonstop for thirteen hours two days prior to this last Saturday in September (1987); the dill-pickle-green river is up eleven inches (28 cm) above normal depth for early autumn. The brisk 3.8-knots-per-hour (4.4 MPH / 7 km/h) current soon has them passing under the sans-sidewalk-with-both-narrow-lanes-vacant Mattole Road Bridge at 7:02.

“Ok, watch out for that sandbar on the right,” stringy-blonde-haired, 20-year-old Bill blasts from the stern.

“Aye-yaye, captain,” short-dark-haired, tall, thin, faux-jeweled-cowboy-hatted Dave replies. “I see it. No problem.” Dave then uses his paddle to fend off the sunken-chestnut-brown, on-the-verge-of-being-submerged mound of silt, leaves, and algae-slime-covered sand.

“Who made you captain?” a smiling, fuchsia-haired Paulette asks. And then giggles and thinks: Bet Veronica broke up with him.

“Not me,” Bill replies deferentially. “I just don’t want this extra-spatial expedition to end before it gets started. The water is cold. Getting wet will not be any fun at all.”

Tan-skinned, just-turned-19, light-brown-haired Amerasian Amarú glances at 17½-year-old, denim-clad, ebony-haired, half-Latina Lisa, who is sitting directly across from him and thinks: Bet we’re the only two non-Anglos at this seaside shindig. Wonder if Lisa likes me. At all. Guess I’ll find out by night’s end.

The other two females, both 18, are looking downstream. Their faces begin to take on a concerned expression. Both simultaneously (and approximately) think: Oh, no – rapids ahead! Don’t want to get splashed and be cold and damp all night. Being soaked and shivering while bee-buzzing [high on MDMA] would be a major bummer.

“Bill, are there rapids on this river?” Paulette asks as she peers at the clear ziplocked bag of glow sticks and thinks: Must not fall in. Could easily drown while high in the chilly water. Not a very good swimmer. Why are there no life jackets?

“I thought that you said there were no rapids,” collegiate-gray-sweatshirted, strawberry-blonde-haired Janet quickly adds before he can answer. She muses: He promised that it would be ‘a smooth glide to the finishing line’. Maybe should have got on the float-boat that will bring us back. Have they left Fields Landing yet?

“No, no rapids in this final stretch of the river, ladies,” Bill assures. “Just some mild riffles. All we have to do is hit them point-on, and no one will get splashed. The biggest hazards are the just-below-the-surface sand shoals. But, you can relax; we’ll be ok. I did this four-mile [6.4-km] run last year in my kayak. It’s nothing like upstream. Thorn Junction to Ettersburg is insane. We had to duck under massive fallen redwoods. There were some four-foot [1.2-meter] drop-offs. We wore wetsuits. Freezing-cold water up there.” Bill ruminates: They seem anxious. Need to allay their fears. Don’t want anyone to be uptight or worried; that would ruin the roll. [slang for the MDMA high]

Everyone is quiet as the raft safely passes through the first riffle zone without incident. They begin to notice that the riverside is dark green on the outside of the curves, and light brown on the inside of the serpentine bends. The young men attempt to discreetly observe the young women. But fail. Everyone is wondering how the night will go.

As twilight descends, Dave suddenly unzips his backpack. “And here they are, folks – the little Molly-by-gollies.” [sic]

“Is it pure ecstasy?” Paulette asks and thinks: Sure hope it is. Don’t want to be ingesting ant poison.

“It will be pure ecstasy in an hour and change,” Dave replies. “This is pure MDMA from a clandestine lab in west Oakland.”

All six then each pop a pill that looks like a neon-green, miniature Fred Flintstone.

“Where is Wilma?” Janet enquires with a grin.

“Probably servicing Slate,” Bill blurts.

“Not with Barney?” Paulette suggests.

“No, Barney would not cheat on Betty,” Amarú says matter-of-factly. Hope that didn’t make me sound like a square. Will this remote-location rave become two dozen half-naked bodies pulsating in a sand pit? Hope not. Though, it would be nice to feel Lisa’s boobs.  

Lisa looks at Amarú and smiles. Wonder if he’s single. Seems like it. He’s kind of cute. Wonder if he is a virgin, too.

After ingesting facsimiles of the popular cartoon character from the 1960s, all are quiet. All except for a pair of mooing cows in a meadow at the halfway mark.

Paulette moos back to the cows. Wonder what those bovines think of us. Silly humans.

Dave starts snapping two dozen glow sticks to life. He hands one to each of the five passengers, who begin to twirl them about. And then he starts clear-taping some to the gunwales as their watercraft slithers through the rural riverine semi-darkness. Soon everyone is noticing a trailing effect associated with the movement of the mini-snakes of luminous multicolored light. Euphoria begins to replace anxiety. Empathy pushes selfish desires overboard; everyone is rooting for each other to have a great time, and a great future. All is going super swell as they close in on the final kilometer (.62 miles).

“Hey, I hear EDM!” [electronic dance music] Bill bombastically broadcasts. “We’re on the homestretch now, my friends. Tighten your jock; it’s party rock.”

All three young ladies roll their eyes as they look at each other. Their common thought: How will the males behave? Or, not behave?!

The excitement escalates as they clear the Collins Gulch area. A steelhead leaps out of the water. Lisa wonders: Is that a good or bad omen? Bad for the fish; it must have been being chased. Hope no one is following us.

“And the six ecstaticians [sic] are into the final turn!” Bill barks like he’s calling the Kentucky Derby.

The hyper-buoyant vessel slowly rounds the sweeping northward curve to the right around a rounded ridge. The music grows markedly louder. They then notice a catamaran-style boat in an estuarine polyp-pool just before the mouth of the river. The craft is awash in a sea of violet and indigo lights. They drift closer.

“Hey guys, I don’t see anyone,” Amarú informs.

“Maybe they’re all horizontal, writhing and getting a nice grind on,” Bill suggests and then chuckles.

No one responds. Their synthetic rubber inflatable moves closer. The EDM is quite loud now. Still not a single person is seen on the anchored vessel.

Bill and Dave then stand up and shine their flashlights on the pontoon boat’s ash-gray-carpet-covered aluminum deck. To their supreme horror, they see seven head-shot-dead Caucasian bodies, males and females, all their age, in pools of blood.

“Holy shit!” Bill exclaims.

“Jesus H. Christ!” Dave immediately adds.

Paulette and Janet rise to see over the motionless boat’s walled-off-below, 40”-high (one-meter-tall) railing.

<bang> <bang>  [very brief pause] <bang> <bang>

Bill, Dave, and Paulette are fatally shot by a semi-automatic pistol and fall in the water; Janet is mortally wounded as well, but falls back onto the flexible floor.

Amarú and Lisa lie low in the dark, stunned to the point of disbelief, but remain faux-dead-quiet. Did this really happen? It did! / Are we going to get shot next? Should just stay flat like Amarú. Must not move. A millimeter. [0.039 inches]

There is a sound of someone running on the sand-accreting spit. And then there is no sound, save for the murmur of the adjacent sea. The air is calm, but clammy.

The inflatable, which was never secured to the motorboat, begins to drift back into the river’s main current. After looping in an eddy, it passes through the 59-foot-wide (18-meters-broad) breach in the beach. Amarú then cautiously raises his head. He sees that their lifeboat is heading into the very-low-wave-height-but-ultra-frothy surf. Turning around, he spies a deserted coastline. His mind races. Maybe that sadistic maniac is gone. Sure hope so. What to do now? Janet is obviously dead. Blood still dripping from her neck. The other three are dead as well. I’m certain of it. No use going back. Way, way too risky. Would most likely just get shot and killed, too. Who could the killer be? Had to be someone who knew them/us – someone who knew about this event. Was it someone who hates ravers? Hates them ‘this’ much?! No, the person is a psychopath, pure and simple. Must be. There are no residences anywhere near here. And there’s no road on the north side of the river that goes all the way to the mouth. Was the person on the boat? And then a severe flip-out? A bad reaction? Or, was he lying in wait? But, how would he have got there? That’s a long, very hilly walk over private property. Yeah, I bet the killer is someone I know. A weird acquaintance. Maybe that tweaker [methamphetamine addict] from Eureka? Those types can get ridiculously violent. Hmmm …

Amarú gets a paddle and turns the craft to the left. The longshore current takes them southward. Amarú considers his options, and then decides on grounding the inflatable.

“Lisa, Lisa … are you ok?” Hope she didn’t get hit. No medical supplies onboard. Would hate to watch her die in front of me. That would be awful. Most awfullest. [sic]

She looks at him and slowly raises her torso and stealthily cranes her head. “Yes, I think I’m fine. I didn’t get hit.” But, poor Janet sure did. She’s dead. Like Paulettte, Bill, and Dave. All dead. Why did this happen? Who could do this? Who?!

“Lisa, I’m going to beach this lifeboat very soon in front of the Mattole Trailhead. We can then walk back to Petrolia on Lighthouse Road. It should take just a little over an hour if we walk fast. Maybe jog-walk-jog. The madman is on the other side of the river. I think that we can safely make it back, and then call the police. Does that sound like a good plan?” Gosh, my mind is a mile a millisecond. And my throat is so dry – patently parched. Sure could use a drink of water right now. / Why has this happened? Did someone get screwed-over? By whom? For what? An ex-girlfriend seen getting cozy with a new guy? Or, an ex-boyfriend putting the moves on a new girl? Could a female really do this? Hmmm … Doubt it. Why kill others, though? Because they’re witnesses! Bet that’s it. This person is definitely a psychopath. Totally deranged. We’ll be tainted by this for the rest of our lives; it will be ingrained in our brains. Forever. We can’t rewind the clock and undo this.

“Sure,” Lisa mumbles after a long pause.

Lisa and Amarú would successfully row the lifeboat ashore. They would leave the corpse of Janet wrapped in the deflated vessel. And they would safely make it back to Petrolia in only 44 minutes.

The local police would come around to believing their account. A 19-year-old female, who had been struggling with mental illness, would be arrested for the murders four days later in Scotia.

Amarú and Lisa would date for a while, but acute memories of that horrid night overshadowed everything; it was an inescapable cloud of despair. Combined with survivor’s guilt, their budding relationship lost momentum and swiftly faded.

Fifty-one troubling months later, an increasingly despondent Lisa would take her life via a hydrocodone overdose on a rainy December Monday in Ferndale.

Amarú became a job-to-job, unenthused, rudderless soul. But then in 2006 he netted $134K from a scratch-off ticket. He used the windfall to buy and refurbish a small rundown diner in Rio Dell. He didn’t get rich off of it, but it was steady income, and he now had a focus in his life. He even started to date again: one his Native American waitresses.

On the 20th anniversary of the still-quite-haunting tragedy at the mouth of the Mattole River, Amarú sat down at a vista and looked across the languid-from-drought stream. The riparian cul-de-sac where the eleven fatal shootings took place was cruelly tranquil. Two decades gone. Out to sea.