A Night Ride with Horvath

Wait, put out your cigarette, I remember now.  It was so-wise that I finally lost my air brakes, it was this time my whistle broke into a scream.  You remember it but have not trotted it out– first because you were protecting me, then because you may have needed it, a sap in the hip pocket– then because it did not scan in that stout-fueled conversation.  

But I remember now, really I do because of a stray cloud of fragrance, the merest chance of a gesture of a hint– and this edition is much more stripped-down, much more raw almost pornographic, more like the original M.S. whose lines I could barely complete before the next crisis– certainly a far cry from the revisionist, lilac-scented late editions.  

For now, you see, I have gone on the dole completely and am forced to perform at the 4/4 time of my patrons– and I must find a quicker step.  I must hear a tune more lively– but all in terms of the old standards– a new transposition if you will.  

The question is:  how long can I pretend to have special knowledge?  Let us tour, then, the galleries of the city, its concourses of stained concrete, its graffiti-scrawled tile passages, its howling ramparts of scoured mortar and chipped green paint–

Let us love through our routes, through our signatures of fading hiss of fabric, crackle of soles, cloud of breath, anything but that queasy moment before the mirror with its doubled chin, its buried youth, its bloodshot revelation–

You think I have shot my bolt.  You are mistaken.  I have merely laid the weapon by.

I was there with Horvath the day he went to earth.  Horvath is not dead, you say, you who know him.  No, he is not dead, but I was there the day he went to earth.  

We were painting his cellar; our arms were like lead and our boots had become glistening red clods.  We were neck deep in a giant’s grave bristling with hairy roots, teeth of broken saucers, nails of cut steel gone to rust...  Our tampico brushes were also clods, clods of tar cooling in the winter night and we slapped them on the crumbling concrete like fighters swinging wide in a trance.  In a dim blue miracle we spied the wedge of gray, the last remaining unpainted corner and Horvath covered it with a fatigue-drunken flourish.  “I am all in,” he announced and picked up his water bottle.  He had to fumble with the bail and the porcelain cap to open it.  Suddenly we were cold and lonely for a good stiff drink.  “There is one last thing, my boy,” he said and picked up an old steel cash box.  He tapped the lid.  “I say when I go to earth.”  Then he tapped his chest with all four fingers.  “I say.”  He dropped the box in the ditch and covered it with earth.  “That’s for you, when I’m really gone you can say that is where Horvath has gone to earth and he did it on this New Year’s Eve.”  

“But what’s in the box?” I said.  

“You mind what I said,” Horvath said, pointing at me, as if I hadn’t asked.  “You mind and when I’m really gone if you need to know you can dig it up and see.”  We climbed out and slapped our hands on our pants and put the tools away in the cellar.  Then we had our drink by his wood stove and Horvath went to his desk and opened the locked drawer.  He opened an old leather wallet and peeled out his cash.  “That’s a good job, my lad and I thank you.”  He handed me the bills but I didn’t take them.  “I want to go with you this time and I won’t take the money,” I said.  He frowned into the bills in his hand and shrugged.  Then he put them back in his wallet.  “I knew you would ask me some day,” he said.  “I thought it might be sooner.” He refilled my glass and as he refilled it he said, “You can go but it is a small thing.”  I drank the whole glass and said “The train leaves the yard, Horvath.”  Horvath looked at me.  “When did it leave the yard?”  

“Last night,” I said.  “I saw it leave.”  

“When?” Horvath said, and as he said it his body heaved a bit, like he was having trouble pushing my craziness.  “About eight,” I said.  “I was on a tramp and the train left the yard and I watched it disappear, into the dark at the foot of the hills.”  

“It was never that train,” Horvath said.  “Will takes me around the yard and we have a drink and go home; and Will locks the gate.  You could not have seen it.”  

“Yet it left and I can show you tonight.”  Horvath took another drink.  “Very well, but we will finish this bottle.  I have been saving it for the completion of this dreadful cellar painting and we must finish it.”  I toasted his good health and we drank.  

Sometime later I looked at Horvath’s face in the glow of the grating and the lamp by the door and I saw myself all full of unfounded hope and absurd expectation and I exclaimed “You and I, Horvath, we have to take that train, we have to take it tonight.”  I slapped my knee as I said the word ‘tonight’ and a puff of orange dust drifted up.  Horvath shrugged.  “It will be as you say,” Horvath said, “but not what you expect.”  He stared into the grating.  “Do you know what to expect Horvath?” I said.  He continued to stare.  The flames glittered in his eyes.  He shook his head.  

We found a second bottle, God knows where and made our way down to the yards.  Will was about to leave and Horvath gave him a drink and introduced me.  He shrugged when Horvath asked if we could take a ride together and said, “Sure.  Hop on.”  We watched the blue and white arc lamps hissing and the utility poles like the spars of ships in drydock and the night behind open and dark and hunched into our greatcoats.  The bottle we held in reserve for later.  

We followed Will out the gate and watched him lock it, then shouted our goodbyes and strolled down the block to the powerhouse and waited a good long while while we supposed Will was walking back to his old clapboard.  Horvath pulled out his watch and nodded.  We walked back to the yard and Horvath simply swung the lock open.  “Will, he never locks it,” he said.  The train waited like a building on its side, its doors open like hungry mouths.  We climbed into one and sat in the dark and waited.  For a while Horvath sat quietly.  Then he said “Hm.  It seems you are pulling my leg.”  

“No, no, Horvath,” I said.  “This train left–”  Then Horvath put his hand on my arm.  He pointed over my right shoulder.  “Look,” he said.  The lamps and shacks and cars in the sidings were gliding by silently.  Horvath sat back.  I saw him dimly, the triangle of his arms down to his hands and his hands on his knees.  From the apex of the triangle came his voice, quiet, unperturbed as always.  “A fine night,” he said.  “It’s high time we took a holiday.”  We had a couple more drinks and slept in our coats.  

The first time we woke Horvath said “It is like Columbus Indiana, where I laid my first brick after my apprenticeship.  You can smell the leaves burning in the streets.  And look– the houses are unpainted.”  

“They’re weathered,” I said.  Horvath sat back.  “No,” he said.  “They are unpainted.  You see?  No spots.  No chips.  There is no money for paint.  There are no street lights.  When the sun goes down the workers trip on the broken sidewalks– or the sycamore roots.  They do what they must and leave the rest to God.”  We watched the arc lamps try to push back the night but they could only show us the sidings and the few one-room houses by the yard.  “This is the world as it is, this is our lot for now,” Horvath said, and the bottle gurgled.  I nodded and took a drink.  We watched the houses go by, a world, a galaxy, a universe of houses with the night full of hollow booms and the smoke of burning leaves and the stink of paper and somewhere underneath the rotten sweetness of the stockyards.  We fell asleep hearing the clank of cars and somewhere far away a truck upshifting.  

Horvath shook me.  “Look,” he said.  “We’ve come to another town.”  I looked out the car and saw a parkway with great trees painted yellow by the street lamps.  The houses were newer, white with black shutters, with old-fashioned lamp standards on long, curving driveways.  The cars were newer, and there was no smell of smoke or burning leaves.  There was only a cold smell, like snow on pavement.  Horvath said “Look at the lamps.  They show us all the driveways, the dead ends.  The streets lead to more houses and the houses are shut.  You see all the porches are hidden by camelias and roses.  These people do not want to see their neighbors.  They only want to see the thresholds of their houses and their garage doors.  This is their world as it is.  I have seen it, I have even lived in it.”  I picked up the bottle but it was empty.  “We have no need of it now,” Horvath said.  I let it roll deeply across the deck.  “I thought you had never been here,” I said.  Horvath watched the cars glistening in their driveways.  “I have never been here,” he said, “But I have seen such places.”  

The train climbed and climbed through the night, out of the plain and into a region of rocks and whispering grasses and shivering oaks.  We watched the morning open its lamp on the crags and watched our breath come out in clouds.  After what seemed a very long time the train left its valley and below us was spread a vast plain fading to purple in the distance.  We could smell a memory of heat and a much closer threat of snow.  The train descended again and we saw a shack by the rails with a crazy smoke stack made of coffee cans.  After a time these shacks appeared more often and graduated to block buildings with signs and roads that carried trucks and cars.  At a busy siding the train finally stopped and Horvath put his hand on my shoulder.  “It seems we must walk,” he said.  By now it was almost night again and we walked past the siding and into a jungle of weathered block buildings, shacks and unpainted houses.  The houses stood in dirt yards but were planted with gardens of cactus and yucca and the wind clattered mobiles made of old cans and bottles.  The sun slanted through them and painted the face of a man whose skin was like a nut, brown and tough.  He put up his hand silently.  We passed more of these houses, their porches open, some decorated with masks, some strung with faded garlands.  We came to what looked like a public square, where a crowd of men and women, some brown and some made brown with shocks of blond hair or brown carefully plastered a chicken-wire man with advertising circulars, posters and newspapers.  Others gathered firewood and piled it under the figure.  One man waved and put out his hand.  Horvath took it and the man said “We burn lies here.  This man is made of lies and we burn them.  Sometimes our people come back from the desert and bring the clothes of those who’ve died trying to cross it and we burn those too, because that’s a kind of lie that the smugglers and coyotes tell them.  We wait for the border patrol to break us up but no one seems to care.  And the fact is, the man made of lies screams.  He screams because lies are a kind of hate and hate doesn’t die quietly.  So he screams and the bigger the lies he’s made of the louder he screams.  The people round about hear it and see us drinking pulque and say “That is where they drink pulque by the light of untruth. “   We have forgotten the truth in all the lies but we burn the lies and drink pulque by the light of them and that is a start.  As we remember the truth we paint it on the cars but the cars never seem to leave the sidings.  And if they do by the time they cross the desert the writing looks like gibberish.”     Horvath and I drank pulque with them by the light of untruth and they gave us some blankets.  

When we woke Horvath hurried me back to the train.  My head pounded and I was sick out the door.  “Go with God,” he shouted as the train pulled away.  “I will see you again, don’t worry my lad.”  I shouted at him but he didn’t hear me.  I slept heavily and woke by the power station.  Someone had propped me against a weathered milestone with my blanket under my head.  I followed the smell of burning leaves home.   

Aaron Hobbs   

New Year’s Eve 2011

Thursday


At the plantation the thing seems like a lark:  a restaurant that serves tiki drinks and plunks you down on the shore to watch the mantas come in at night.   (Get it?  "Ray's" on the Bay?)  The drive is brief enough and we are in just the right mood for something glamorous and a bit overpriced.

So we negotiate the terrifying driveway and are not at all perturbed by the rumbling sound in the sky and the spattering showers that turn to steady rain.  But on a straight, lushly-planted drive above the timeshares of South Kona the sky turns pinkish red and instead of rain we're deposited in a mountain stream.  The sky is a great bucket that just tipped.  Storm gratings under the road vomit their overflow and every ditch, every depression is white with water.  The surface of the road is actually stippled with whitecaps.  The car drifts lazily over these slicks, suddenly without ambition to do anything in particular.  I keep up the low patter, at least at times, to suppress the creepy feeling.  I see a hill coming, above a nest of rooftops and what I hope to be our destination.  I'm not looking forward to it.

About the time we turn into the parking zone the rain abates and we find the presence of mind to wonder at the acres and acres of parking and access.  It's hard to tell whether we're in a resort, a darkened financial district or an airport.  Eventually I find the great breezeway and two-way loop that means, in any setting, "Lobby".   And with "lobby" comes "entrance" and "valet".  The last practically runs out to meet us.  He's extremely clean-cut, the sort of guy you find in slacks and polo on the golf course.  He tells us to look for the Gold Tower.  In fact, all the towers look gold:  the exterior lighting, the streetlamps, all a rich yellow.  Eventually I spot a grotto of reds and blues and flickering tiki torches that must be the restaurant.  We make for it, temporarily losing ourselves in a maze of sweeping walks, bromeliads and koi ponds.  Somehow we come up in a breezeway just outside the entrance.

The restaurant is a late '60s spectacle, with massive, sweeping terraces and deep rattan chairs arranged around tables that contain fire pits.  The hostess takes us straight to one of these. We're not there long before Meredith points seaward.  Powerful lamps illuminate the surf.  The fin of a manta ray that looks about the size of a la-z-boy recliner peels up out of the water and slips in again.  I see its mouth, like a bay within a bay, billowing complacently in the waves.

Then it's time for drinks.  Our waiter, Willie, is extremely polished, with big, toothy grin and bulletproof demeanor. We order a Hibiscus and Bourbon and Dark and Stormy.  They're a little slow in coming, as are our plates, but it's a busy night and it seems in bad form to quibble in a place like this.   Farther under the roof, the tables make a reef in which the guests mill in little bait balls or sit in their cubbies like contented blennies. Further back is the grotto of the bar, all silver spines and blue dimness.  It's a place to inflate even the most tired schoolboy James Bond fantasy.  

After the food comes, a pair of wary cats come to stare up at the guests on the terrace and crouch near their exit between the bars of the railing.  The black-and-white reminds me of Paulina and her ambition, and just for a moment I wish I was there with her.  Meredith and I fuss over them as if they belonged to us.  After a time, smaller versions come slinking through the bars.

Thursday

Pineapple Park is a 60s era motel, all low eaves and vertical siding.  It is now a hostel and a place to rent surf and swim equipment, managed by a tiny Hawaiian woman with an even tinier dog.  You see the dog first, clicking out from its spot under the counter.  The walls are covered with advice, maps, rate schedules and photos of happy couples and families.  The dog looks up at you as if asking for your approval.  I give it to him and the woman pads out from some back storeroom and tells me that he generally barks loudly at strangers.  I just smile and say "Oh yeah?"  It must be my lost look.

The woman finds Meredith's equipment no problem, but she looks at my feet and tells me that I must take off my shoes.  They, the feet, are long and narrow, to be sure.  The fins she brings out are ridiculous.  I see them and think of "Sea Hunt" with Lloyd Bridges.  I do not see myself in them.  I think even then I determine not to use them.  I would regret it later, but only slightly.  She tells us to be careful as we walk out the door.  We load the stuff in the trunk.

The online listing Meredith found describes Kahaluu Beach Park as a good choice for novice snorkelers.  From a distance it seems so, but reality soon intrudes.  There's a moment of lightness when we see each other in our masks.  We don't put on the fins.  That would just be too much.

We study the beach.  We realize with a growing discomfort that there is no sand at all, just head-sized black cobble.  Farther out, maybe as close as a few yards, is a blurry line of yellow.  But a yard is as good as a mile when you have to get into the water past your shoulders, and you have to get in on the rocks.

And when we get in, everything changes for Meredith.  The mask feels like a device to drown her and the water pushes her around roughly like a bully at an open-air concert.  She tries to find a place to stand and the rocks gouge and scrape her feet.  The waves pull her out gently, then push her head-first toward the rocks.  I do my best to calm her, take her by the hand and lead her to deeper water.  Finally we finish fiddling with the masks and swim with our faces under.

It's paradise, with whipping and drifting schools of yellow tangs, elongated triggerfish and nameless silver fingerlings, shimmering like evening gowns.  The white and ivory reticulations of coral and stone harbor deep violet urchins, orange urchins with spines like thick pencils, and in the bigger holes pink brain coral.  I keep a hold of Meredith.  It's hard to stay in that safe harbor between the shallows and the drop-off further out.  After a time I decide to swim to deeper water; by now Meredith can make it on her own, though we stay within a few feet of each other.  She signals to me under the water; the gesture is urgent, but not panicked.  Her face, though, is strained.  It's time to go in.

Coming in is much tougher than anything we'd done so far.  Meredith is tired from fighting the current and the waves push her roughly into the rocks.  She makes several attempts-- with my help-- to pull out of the undertow to stand and wade through the rattling cobbles.  At one point the lifeguard even steps out of his shack, waiting.  The third time she manages to break free and we wade in.  I find a place to sit on the seawall and hold the towel around her and stroke her hair.  My knee smarts.  It's bleeding.  She murmurs something about taking care of it and I tell her it's fine.  I never should have taken you out there, I say.  She leans her head on my shoulder and I stroke her hair.  I curse myself for laughing off the fins.  They could have saved us a lot of grief.  But they also could have jammed in the rocks; who knows?  Meredith's hair smells good, like heat and salt and a little shampoo.  Her breathing slows.  The sun warms us.  

Saturday

We are exhausted from the trip and the plantation is quiet: the only sound the soft music and the occasional clink of glasses from the kitchen.  We drive back into Captain Cook, a retail strip about a mile long fronting a hinterland of gravel drives, banana palms and mango trees, and pick up a pizza from Patz Pies, a local hangout in a tiny retail/professional plaza painted dark green.  When we order the place is full, with a few sun-bleached and browned locals drawling by the front door and an older couple at one of the tables.  The locals look to be in their early 20s and a type that I never worked up to, never even crossed paths with, and now see them in my rear-view mirror as something more than strangers.  They probably snicker at me while I wait for the girl with long dreadlocks to take my order.

The pizza is big but thin, with great archipelagos of toasted cheese and chunks of Canadian bacon like monuments in the tide.  We eat the pie at home and drink some red wine we found at the Choice Market, a split-level from the late 60s with shops on the lower level, or the first right off Mamalahoah Highway, and all the life and traffic up behind, in the upper lot.  You walk in and the sweet smell of Asian groceries rushes out on the air conditioning.  To our great joy we find not only a decent selection of wine and beer just inside the door but liquor, plenty of it, and lots of rum:  my long residency in Oregon has made me unaware of the more relaxed liquor laws of many of the other 49 states.

We toast our luck over the pie and sleep like rocks.

We were led to believe from Michael's presentation the night before that breakfast would be mostly cold and mostly fruit, and we were prepared to accept this gladly as part of the way of things on the big island in general and at the plantation in particular, but we learn that his was a masterpiece of understatement.
The counter is covered with sliced fruit and looks like a stall at an open air market, with all kinds of local bread, boiled eggs, pancakes and some kind of shredded meat that he calls "kalua pork".  I learn this refers to the way it is cooked, literally underground on a bunch of hot rocks and banana leaves and covered all over with burlap.  It is excellent.  For a finisher there is fresh mango juice and kona coffee, smooth and rich with no bitter edge.  I think it is even better than the cold-brewed Tanzanian that I've had.

And then you drink your coffee and look at the bay and watch the tiny white lines and the cars like fire ants on the road and hear the doves and pheasant and just generally get into the feel of the thing.

Kailua-Kona is a sad whisper of a tourist trap, with a cracked and heaving terra cotta plaza that may have been handsome when Reagan was president and stores hawking warmed-over beach art and embarrassingly earnest inspirational posters.  Interspersed among the kitsch are serious boutiques that cater to well-heeled tourists that have been caught short and need what they need.  A few buidings in the center of town remember when the place was just a little fishing village and the seat of government for King Kamehameha, way back when he was just boss of the island.  Hulihe'e Palace is here, along with Kamakahonu, Kamehameha's residence, who unlike the palace has been obliterated by more modern structures.  

It's not a bad place to be, really, and it's pleasing to look down the alleys and streets at the volcano rock walls and enormous blossoming trees.  After a while you get to warm even to the suspect types that seem to lounge around the sea wall or sit with their backs to the coconut palms growing on the leeward side of it.  On a certain not-too-fresh stretch of Ali'i Drive we walk up to Fish Hopper bar.  I'm not sure which is hopping, the fish or the fisher, but the place is within view of the street and holds out big, overpriced tropical drinks, which is just what we need.  It's as they say, and we settle in at the bar and order a Mai Tai and a Zombie.  The barkeeps are friendly in a slick, efficient sort of way and I even chat with the guy about his brother who lives in Eugene or somewhere.  The drinks come and they are big and satisfyingly architectural, with great hunks of tropical fruit and palettes of pink and orange.  They taste good, too, with just enough rum to overcome the mountain of ice that they all seem to require.

Meredith and I talk about the the two trails that brought us together and the many steep drop-offs along the way; a good bar seems the place to do this, as the best of them are places of refuge; you sit with your drink and wonder at the many ways you could have gone down out there.  In Kona, in view of the Pacific, the symbolism is tripled.  Perhaps we are aware of this.  Either way, I feel that familiar sense of expansion as the rum moves in, that effect that turns everything into a map, but this time she and I are the ones walking beneath the little plaster mountains and glass lakes, pointing at each new wonder.

The drinks really are very good.

Friday

At Kona the low tan blocks have been replaced by a-frame huts-- yes, huts-- with thatch roofs and low walls of volcanic rock and light grey mortar.  A surprisingly helpful luggage agent tells us that our bag did not make it and could he have our address so they can send it down?  He practically rolls his eyes when we tell him.  Apparently we are in the back country.  No matter, the bag is coming on the next flight and by the time we have our car-- a process that always seems to take way, way too long-- the bag is sitting in a row with some others just under the agent's right elbow.

The country round about is a terrain of jagged black rock sloping down from greenish uplands, whose tops are hidden by grey clouds.  The roads undulate over the piles of clinker and here and there show their age with great potholes and sections heaved up.  Pretty soon the rain starts-- as it does here every day in the late afternoon-- and a light drizzle turns to a heavy cataract, a thing that gives sudden, urgent meaning to the signs that warn you about certain low sections of road.  Gradually we climb out of the flatland around the airport and onto the shoulders of the mountains, through drooping coffee plantations and rusty steel roofs covered with what used to be green paint, light pink and aqua ranch styles set back behind trees of red blossoms like bursting star mines and great dangling pink trumpet flowers.  And at the foot of every driveway hand-painted signs:  "No Spray"; "No Spray- Mahalo".  Also faded signs for family mac nut farms and postage stamp plantations.

Sometimes there's a retail district of low, white lapboards and the rare 40s-era stucco block, perhaps a filling station, and all of it pleasantly down-at-the-heel as if it were abasing itself for the brilliant orange, red, violet, yellow and pink blossoms that seem to decorate every available space here.  Then there are the great, spreading trees with crowns the size of small houses-- banyans?  I expect to see Jupiter threading the gold bug through a skull, high in the black Os and Us under the leaves-- and the mangoes, with their spear-like leaves and clusters of delicate green/orange fruit.  

 There is a complex of modern, hard-edged buildings back of Kailua-Kona, with a Marshall's, Old Navy, McDonald's--but even these have to perch on the ridiculously steep parkways that seem to be the norm here.  And even the busiest intersections are decorated with wild tangles of pink blossoms and jagged yucca plants.

But in the rainstorm we have no colorful cabinet signs or green and white legends to guide us, so we nearly miss the turn for Ka'awa Loa Plantation.  The situation, too, is improbable-- there is a sign, and, apparently, a driveway on the side of a hill that seems so steep as to permit only a footpath-- and that a precarious one.  But there is a driveway.  We both fall silent as the car labors.  We are both thinking that we will simply tip over backwards and go crashing through the coffee bushes and mangoes and creepers and explode onto the road below.  A patch of moss on the steepest section underlines the point.

At the top there is a tight circular drive around a lush planting, all under a flat roof.  You walk under and through a pair of heavy screen doors and stand  in  a quiet entry with a white staircase climbing to your left and another set of heavy wood screens straight ahead.  To their left is a sitting room with overstuffed, modern couches, lots of tropical hardwood and prints of local scenes and artwork.  To the right of the sitting room and down a short hall is the kitchen.  We walk into this darkened entry, still unsure even of where we are.  For a terrible moment I think "My god, we're standing in someone's living room; we have the wrong house."  Then I hear a man's treble welcoming a guest in the kitchen.  It is vaguely familiar, as is his face.  He turns and holds up a hand while he talks.  I relax inside; we are expected after all.

This is Michael, one of the two men who run the plantation and minister to the guests' many needs.  On a shelf over one of the kitchen counters is a photo of him in tee and dogtags standing next to Robin Williams, a snapshot, I assume, from the production of the film Good Morning Vietnam.  He has a constantly sly look, as if he were hiding a secret that will please you and he's enjoying the anticipation.  Usually this is the case; we find that he's extremely well-informed about Captain Cook, Kailua-Kona and the island in general and seems to know just what you require before you require it.  He groans sympathetically when he learns we came from Portland and shows us our room, a charming, well-lit corner with big, soft bed.  A small room to one side, closed with shutters, is the toilet.  Then we come back downstairs and find fresh mango juice and hot brownies waiting for us.  Soft guitar and a man's falsetto, singing in Hawaiian, filters from the sitting room and we sit on the other side of that second set of doors.

On the other side is a lawn, backed by two immense mango trees.  At times, perhaps every ten minutes or so, something heavy crashes through the leaves and lands with a thud.  At first you are alarmed; then you realize that these are mangoes dropping.  "If you like mangoes, pick 'em up and eat 'em," Michael says.  "No extra charge."  Doves trill to each other in the upper branches and add their part to a chorus of metallic whirrs and growls and cries.  And you can witness this from a veranda covered by a  roof supported by graceful turned columns and served by not one, but three sets of heavy screen doors:  two into the sitting room, one into the kitchen.  You may sit at one of several tables with high-backed chairs, or take your ease in a rocker, or sink into one of a pair of deeply-padded wicker swivels.  At the far end of the porch, at the driveway end, is a teak couch with immense cushions and an end table.

You stay on the porch, not just for the handsome lawn and park-like stand of palms and mango trees, but what is beyond that back yard:  look.

Behind the mangoes, a rank of tall, graceful flowering trees, their tips orange and red blossoms like fireworks.  Beyond that, a screen of banana palms and tropical fruits rapidly disappearing, because remember we are on the face of a scarp, and far below, far, far below, so that the belt highway is a shoelace, a quilt of light and dark green, the stitches stone walls and narrow gravel roads.  And in the center of the quilt a white country church with red roof and steeple.  And beyond all that?  The measure of the vast Pacific, brilliantly blue and scratched with fine white lines:  the odd yacht or deep sea fishing charter.  And beyond that?  A pink haze and the heavy clouds of Hawai'i-- and perhaps Captain Kidd or Billy Bones or Squire Trelawney on another crazy junket.  Somewhere back of the clouds your waking ends and the dreaming begins.  Then the clouds seem to roll in and even up the mountainside and then...  Who's to say where the dreaming ends and the waking begins?  Jim Hawkins knows.  The Squire knows.  Long John Silver knows.  Billy Budd knows.  Tashtego knows.

By God I miss that place even now.

Thursday

Saturday morning comes slanting in, ducking its head for us.  I read my mother's letter.  As usual, she reads my mind.  Somehow I am still carried by the ship of state that left her slip the day before and don't delay but find some cream-colored stationery in the desk by the window and fill a page with careful explanation.  It's truly remarkable how quickly I grasp the requirements of the office.

As I write I can see the little boy looking on at this grown man, suddenly quiet and solemn at what seems a minor task; I can sense his uncomprehending stare.  Perhaps he is awed, perhaps he is impatient, perhaps he is bemused.  Then I feel his impatience turn to grief:  the blossoms falling, the smell of cut grass, the golden acorns littering the sidewalk, they are no longer there for him, merely there for anyone who sees them.  And he must take from them what he can.

And the day before, standing in the center of that circle of stone, I have already told the world-- my family, my friends, what can truly be called the world as far as I am concerned-- that I know this finally and completely, and now they know that I know.

And like a swift ducking in an ocean wave I find my eyes opened, smarting and the truth all around me and containing me, a truth so big it's another world.  She is my only point of reference and I instinctively take her hand.  She and I stand in the immensity.   This is what the man knows and the little boy cannot know.

And, of course, standing behind the little boy is his mother.

So I do not delay.  I write the careful explanation, I write her title on an envelope and seal it carefully-- then, a bit shamefaced, as this, like so many other details, was one that should have been finalized days, even weeks ago-- I call my mother and tell her yes, we will need a ride to the airport.  She must read this before we leave, must not be kept in suspense.

And now the sun truly sets on our marriage:  we take a late morning bus from downtown to the sleepy bustle of Westmoreland and gratefully stretch into our our baggy weekend clothes.   There is one last occasion:  a brunch at Kay's, where we finally-- for shame!-- introduce ourselves to the bartender Jeffrey (a thousand apologies to him-- I have not seen his name in print) and explain to him that his bar saw the dawn of our married life and is now witnessing the sunset of the first day.  Also attending:  (from the left):  Debbie, Dena, Stan, Mary, Lindsey, Evelyn, Gina Marie, Meredith, Aaron, Justin.   This is the family I am gaining.  I now have siblings...  I scarcely know where to begin.

It's too short a time before we are packing and wondering why we didn't do it before.  Then a restless night followed by hurried coffee and my mother early and encumbered with a clutter of minor questions.

She's so distracted on the way to the airport she drives over a low divider at the Powell/ I-205 on-ramp.  Her explanation:  "I was looking left".  We arrive without further incident and with my letter safe in her hands.  Then the rude awakening of the TSA and their schoolmarmish fluid restrictions and stocking feet and belts in trays.  But my face, scrubbed clean as it is, newly rinsed as it is, can keep smiling even in the midst of this tiresome routine.  In fact, one endears himself by advising me when I offer to take off my ring.  "Not that.  Never take that off."

The flight is interminable, with a thousand glimpses at the slowly inching pictogram of the jet tracing its white line across the Pacific.  By the time we see the low blockhouses of Honolulu International we are already nearly a half hour late and running for our connection.  We are so close the agent has to shout directions to us as we jog into the breezeway.

But we make it, we make it.  Thank God.  And it is not jets but props we hear, not a compact screen but a featureless drink tray, a small price to pay for the blessedly short flight from Honolulu to Kona.  

Friday

The roses put on all their jewelry for us today.  Yes, it is raining.  Yes, there is some kind of crap in the city's drinking water.  Yes, there are last-minute calls made in the dripping breezeway of the Bi-Mart.  But nothing can disturb the quiet dignity of the firs and dogwoods in their new leaves, the trunks purple and dun in the slanting sunlight.  And best of all, we are ready.  Ready deep down.  And there is time for a drink, maybe two, on my own, with The Magic Flute playing in the background.

I change up to the 9th, Beethoven.  I want him in on this, this rare feeling of confidence and mastery.  The sweat dried long ago and I have no qualms, no doubts.  For now I am complete.  And the city is complete with me.  She and I will get along fine.

My family and friends are behind me:  a bundle of sticks you cannot break:   the fasces of office.  But today I am delegated to carry the family name, in that meld of the personal and public, the individual and the family, a union so old, so human.  And I am held up by it.

And by God, I do love her.

(Thank you Beethoven)    

Friday

"I thought it was a woman's drink," Vargas said.  "Gene gave me one and I drank it down in one gulp; I was like whoof."  Stan leans forward.  "It is a woman's drink," I said.  "It is almost all whiskey."  We are on the night bus, all loud, all painters, almost all in Section 3, except Atanacio (or Nacho), who is not parked in Section 3, but in Section 1, because, he said, "They don't let me park there."  He looks down after informing us and continues to clean his 5-in-1.

One day just before the toolbox meeting Joe turned to one of us with a dazed smile and said "Look what Nacho did for me."  He held out his 5-in-1 and I could see its edge gleaming.  "You could fuckin' cut paper with it," Joe said.  "Did he use a grinder?" the other said.  "No, man," Joe said.  "He used another knife or something.  That is sharp."  I thought of all the 5-in-1s I had found at the bottom of the tool crib, their edges permanently fouled by grey and white epoxies.  I turned to Nacho.  He was leaning against the neighbor's trailer, scraping his hardhat.  This, in fact, is what he does most of the time during the bull session and toolbox meetings.

Another time, in the trenches, now long since covered over by concrete walls, steel cladding and miles of pipe, we were squatting and kneeling with our angle grinders, occasionally tilting up our face shields to read the profiles we had made in the concrete, when Darby appeared above the edge, backlit and muffled by his half mask.  "That looks like shit, Nacho," he said through the respirator.  For some reason Nacho was uncovered.  Probably it was breaktime.  "Yeah, it look like shit," he said, tired.  "Everything look like shit."

For some reason, though, this Friday, there is no implied tension, though we are in just as much a hurry as any other time.  Even Lance seems more relaxed; while we are wrapping up for the night, coiling cords, stuffing trash bags, he reminds me to look for the most beautiful place on earth, a place in Wyoming whose name, I blush to relate, I have forgotten again.*  While he tells me about it his motions are rapid and purposeful, but it is cleanup and everyone is suddenly sure of what they're doing:  they're going home.  Tools are stowed in the tent, dirty thinner is poured through funnels, grips are packed, to the rhythm of the statement "Let's get the fuck OUT of here" in a kind of subterranean jazz beat.  But in the prelude, while Jesus and I are saturating and laying fiberglass on an equipment pad, instead of quizzing us on our procedure, he chats about the problems of the crew downstairs and occasionally shows us the silvery spots in the material that mean holidays--  as if there was no piano-sized deadline dangling over our heads and this was some kind of class and he was the instructor.

And so later, when he mentions Vedauwoo, I can see the same expression on his face as he looks through his windshield at the passing granite towers and sage forests of his home.

*Vedauwoo, Wyoming.  http://tools.wmflabs.org/geohack/geohack.php?pagename=Vedauwoo&params=41.178396_N_-105.356312_E_

Wednesday

My head hurts from trying to keep everything straight.  I need to visit the men's store to try on suits, I need to assemble a guest list, I need to sort laundry and on and on.  And it is all at the behest, the small things I need to do in exchange for the generosity of others:  my mother, my grandfather, my wife.  The confusion is of my own making, the cost of waiting too long, too many decisions to simply put off...

At the men's store the salesman is instantly casual and personable, an adept of the new model that says you should come off like a high school friend that only shared the good times.  He makes the suits, shoes, cedar hangers a personal favor to him.  While pretending to study the dim rows of charcoal, navy and tan I think that perhaps there were reasons I delayed this chore.  I have the strength of personality to turn down socks.  I'm so relieved when I walk out that I walk all the way to the rink end of the mall, climb the stairs and buy a mocha and biscotti.  Enough feeling comes back that I can even congratulate myself a little.  The suits really did look good on me, I should wear  turtlenecks, there's nothing affected about outfits, etc.  These daydreams meld seamlessly with the general mood of sunlight, instant reward and hushed footfall on carpeting.  My impending ten-hour shift seems like a momentary pause...

Back in the hot parking garage that stinks of gasoline, burned and unburned, and the pent-up frustration behind cars endlessly waiting for that chirping and blinking Explorer that never backs from its spot, back in this World War II-era fascist fortress, reality sets in.  Sarah Vaughan's voice rises to a shriek and I jab the button too late.  After some minutes of pushing and prying the cassette pops free, trailing a syrupy line of tape.  The cassette renaissance is over after a brief few days.  I practice my coping skills and turn on the radio.  A decent instrumental starts in, to cheer me in the darkness of the out ramp.

And more importantly, the bastinado torture of my $20 boots is over.  Beside me, nestled in their box, is a perfectly serviceable pair of Roebucks, all clean gold leather, brass hooks and eyes and leatherette padding.  At work, waiting for the shuttle, I feel protected and buoyant, even cautiously optimistic.  I make small talk with Mark while watching for the white rectangle of the bus.

Today's toolbox meeting is run by Jody, who, as usual, has no list of warnings and adjurations, but contents himself with a description of what we will do; it's bad enough:  we must kneel and crawl under some newly-installed gratings to hang fiberglass on the walls of a great sump.  While we kneel and make great Ss and Us with our drywall knives in the bug filler Stacy recites his favorite bits from Commando.  We make this last the rest of the long, tedious time under the gratings, even branching out into Robocop and an appreciation of Ronny Cox.

As I work the bug filler, an epoxy compound that looks and feels like snot, great drops of it coat my forearms, blending with the long glass fibers that rub from and fall off the sheets we're hanging.  The chem glove gauntlets I wear do nothing to stop this process.  For a while the coating seems mobile and relatively benign; after all, there's no odor, no irritation except from the fibers.  A little solvent will take it off.

A little solvent does not take it off, merely smears it around.  A few fibers reluctantly come off on the rag.  The rest remain in the gummy matrix on my arm ("I don't need a gun to kill you, Matrix!").  As I write the fibers jab and abrade my skin.  I've already spent a good hour tearing half-and quarter-inch pieces off my arms.  Hours remain.

On the bus Jay laughs when I quietly state that the dried crap is my skin now, I may as well get used to it.  I pull off an ugly scab of epoxy and fiberglass.

Monday

Hawks circle over the factory and light in the dead trees in the wetland south of the trailer city.  Under the truck bridge widgeons and mallards drift in a forest of cattails.  I limp along the gravel pedestrian path with my tipster, cursing the perpetually lamed Gator, idle by the lunch tent with a flat tire.  I would have had to carry these buckets anyway, for after you park by the loading dock there could be endless yards, endless steps to go til you reach your place of work in the building.

So Jose and I stand in the orange and tan scissor lift and watch the descending copper pipe stubs and goosenecked fire sprinklers and wait for the platform to stop hesitating and quivering like a nervous dog.    We check over our shoulders to make sure we're not jabbing each other in the face with our extension poles and feel for the paint troughs with our feet.  Mine ache:  the $20 boots I bought months ago are finally completely gone, little better than bedroom slippers.  Occasionally I bump my head on a pipe or a fire sprinkler.  Eventually I'm on the floor and he's in the lift and I'm slapping the eighteen-inch roller far above and coming all the way down, then slapping again a little lower, coming all the way down, all the way up, all the way down, all the way up, and laying off way over, probably too far over, this is just primer after all...

Somehow seven becomes ten and ten becomes noon and noon becomes 3:11 and I'm hurrying, wondering if I'll get to class on time.  I make a soft white burrito of the eighteen-inch and a piece of plastic and pack my grip and limp down the six stairways to the loading dock.  Mechanical engineers trudge ahead of me, slowly, (why are they never hurried?), and I grimace as I pass them and walk by the taco trucks and under the steel shelter over the guard shack.

Traffic is like cold honey on Sunset east of Sylvan Hill.  Luckily I have Andy Williams to keep me company.  Born Free, he croons as the cars inch toward their ultimate reward.  Suddenly there's a breeze on my face and I can no longer read the license plate frame of the car ahead of me.  But soon it's back to suspended animation, this time on the Banfield and the concrete echo of Sullivan's Gulch under the hospital.  There's nothing to do but watch the blocks of grey and blue and glittering cars and rooftops and listen to Andy Williams thanking his audience (has it been that long on the road?).

Finally, FINALLY, I'm moving at sixty miles an hour again and swinging around the clover petal at NE 122nd.  And the breeze is back, drying the sweat on my face and making the cotton on my shoulder stir.  I am reminded of the tension in my shoulders and neck.

In the dim warehouse we watch videos of a balding Englishman painting faux finishes.  He has a soothing drone and some of the apprentices nod and surrender; some tap their pens in irritation.  The craftsman is clean, clean, clean, with a big heavy watch and the faintest hint of a smile.  He can't quite believe, himself, how convincing his work is.

Afterwards Mr. Heino assures us we could easily ask a hundred dollars an hour for such work.

The day is nowhere near dead when I pull out of the parking lot and turn onto Whitaker Way.  I decide to take Fremont home and put on Book of Love.  The music is driving and angular but softened by the orange haze over Sullivan's Gulch and the mesas of East Portland .  The heat has finally abated and all I can think about is getting home and my beautiful wife (not really yet, but so close I may as well say it) there waiting for me.  

Try to Remember

Let us give Don Rosner a rest for now.  He needs to work, needs to get things done and figure things out.  I need to talk for a while.  I, I.  Who is I?  Right now a child tired of the isolation of his sick bed.  Is he a bit too fond of the attention, the relaxation?  Perhaps.  Perhaps he willed some of his sickness.  But there is illness, there are symptoms.  There is a reason.  

Did you go to your prom? Meredith asks.  No, I say.  Wish I did.  I was too chunky, too awkward, too strange, too something.  It would have been something.

Here it is:  I always wanted to see me doing it while I did it, always had to envelop whatever I was doing with another layer of awareness.  Always had to refer to myself.  It was a stutter.  It is a stutter.  I have one now, I mean a real one.  My mouth locks up.  It's because I'm fully aware of the oddity now.  I wasn't then, I could deceive myself.

There was a big living room (it seemed big at the time) with a gold brocade sofa at one end, really a loveseat.  It was covered with a fabric that featured a vegetal motif in a satin gold thread on a background of matte gold, with a kind of slight burr.   Rectangles of the same fabric guarded the arms, kept in place by little decorative pins, with plastic heads made to look like cut glass.  The pin was curved like a corkscrew so that it would bed in the fabric and stuffing and wouldn't poke you when you were shampooing the couch or daubing at your spilled old fashioned or whatever it was that you did on the arm.  If you faced the couch, turned left and followed the wall behind, past the aluminum windows at the ceiling and the simulated walnut grain panelling with black grooves, you would come to the head of the stairs.  You had to watch your head because the edge of the opening was a little too close to the step under it.

In the stairwell the wall was cinderblock covered with light green paint.  The steps were covered with a soft carpet made of loops of orange, brown and white fabric, so worn that the individual loops were beaten down into a kind of mat.  At the bottom of the stairs you would smell sea air, sand, a little dirt maybe, and the high, tart smell of beach grass, especially if it was summer.  The floor would be cool.  It was a concrete slab covered with linoleum molded in a thatch design, great shapes of tan grooved with black, so that the whole floor looked like a flattened, two-dimensional grass mat.  On the wall at the foot of the stairs was a grey Square D circuit box with carefully hand-lettered labels to show you where to turn on the water heater, upstairs outlets, baseboard heaters.     On your right was the front door, solid core wood, flat, with a brass knob and deadbolt that always stuck a little, a casualty of the salt air.  It was light green like the wall.  Ahead was the bathroom, closed by a passage door, mahogany, hollow core, and ranged below the window dead ahead the toilet, sink with white formica and gold and silver flecks over a dark wood cabinet and on the right the shower stall, covered with white and pale green 3/4-inch tiles in a random pattern.  On the outside of the sink/shower partition, over the sink, were clear glass ornaments shaped like sea horses, with bright orange color inside the glass and bits of gold and silver mica.

Left of the bathroom was another door, a bedroom with a creaking steel bed that was covered with a white bedspread decorated with a large design made of tiny balls of thread.  Underneath were army blankets and old, supremely soft sheets.  At the foot of the bed was a closet stocked with a few old slickers, once bright yellow, now a dustier version.  At the head of the bed was a low nightstand and a floor lamp with a brush gold finish and rocket-shaped shades that sprouted from the top.  Opposite the bed, on the same wall as that behind the bathroom sink, were a pair of high windows.

If you walked out the bedroom and turned to your right you would pass a row of coat hooks and find another hollow core door, this one to a slightly larger bedroom with a wood frame bed whose head incorporated a boxed-in book shelf.  The shelf would have been loaded with two or three bulky James Michener novels.  On top the shelf, in a place of honor, a thin mock-up of a wooden tombstone with the legend:  "Here he lay all cold and hard, the last damn dog that pooped in my yard".

Outside, on the wall you faced when you climbed the stairs again, another pair of windows.

Climb the stairs (watch your head).  Turn left and look out the wall that meets the wall behind the loveseat.  This wall is mostly glass, like the wall on your right, and beyond is a wide deck that looks over a broad strip of beach grass and foredune that slopes down to a beach covered with light, fine grey sand.  Beyond that, the grey/blue/green desert of the North Pacific.  Turn to the right to see the deck wrap around that side and the roof of the boat garage, the tops of the shorepines that inhabit the yard and line the driveways.

Inside, in front of these windows, a long rectangular table topped with a rectangle of salmon-orange linoleum set in an oak frame, all covered with a vinyl table cloth with flocked backing and decorated with blue and green flowers.  At the end of the table, on your left, a black and white television.  When it was switched on you would likely see Bonanza or Rockford Files reruns; sometimes the Saturday matinee:  True Grit; Chato's Land; Midway.    

On your right is a broad fireplace with sandstone mantelpiece and a decorative grating, all built of brick, the chimney almost the same width as the firebox.  A tile threshold.  On the right side a recliner.  You could sit there with a rum and coke in one of the plastic fluorescent orange cups from the kitchen cupboard.  To the right of the fireplace, between it and the stairs, was a set of folding closet doors, opening on another bedroom, almost filled by a creaking marshmallow of a bed, covered by a worn salmon-orange bedspread.  The room was made warm, stuffy even, by the intense heat of the chimney, which almost totally occupied one wall.   On the wall opposite was cut in a redundant Markel heater, an improbable relic cased in a chrome faceplate and open wire cage like a catcher's mask, all shielding the user from two great rods, ribbed with what looked like fine threads and about 3/4 inches through, that glowed orange when power was supplied.  On dark winter days the metal would click and ping like some animal talking to itself.

The kitchen ranged to the right of the glass wall and dining table, left to right: a row of hanging cabinets over a stainless steel stovetop; a stainless steel kitchen sink, under a pair of windows screened by yellow-green mesh curtains; a countertop under more cabinets. At the end of those cabinets, on the wall to your right and left of another window, a placard with an image of a ship on the ocean and the old Breton fisherman's prayer "O God, thy sea is so great and my boat is so small."  To the right of that window, another wall, counter and row of cabinets, up and down.  

Ready?

Pack your sky blue leatherette overnight bag.  Don't forget the grooved white cylinder that holds your toothbrush.  Also bring a change of socks and some old Keds.  We may go walking up the beach to the jetty.  Check around.  Check the bathroom. 

We'll stop and fill up the Skylark.  See the droplets on the windshield, disappearing behind the dark blue tinting stripe at the top.  Turn up the tape deck when "Bo Bo" starts playing.    

Look at all those fields off Sunset.  This was all farmland once.  Now look at all the brown squares of future shopping malls, the backhoes, the rebar forests.  Once in a while you see a stand of firs, a stand of oaks.  Sometimes there's an old farmhouse in the oaks.  Crack the window a little if it's stuffy.  

The woods are pretty now.  Green, lots of green.  Up the mountainsides you can see the light green daubs of alder and maple in the firs.  Keep your eyes open for deer and elk.    If you're hungry we'll stop in at Oney's for a bite.  

River's high.  It was a wet spring.  

We got lucky again.  It's beautiful.  

Central Valley and the Coast:  A Guide


Belmar.

Leave your car at the parking lot by the public beach access.  Walk up Ocean Road.  Admire the starch of the early spring bulbs in the decaying planter boxes of the pale blue and pink beach cottages on your right.  Embroider on the daily habits, the histories of the cottage owners.  Are they residents at work?  Absentee landlords who come down only too rarely, rent their places out when they can't come?  Small-scale speculators turning older homes for a profit?  Here is a nondescript ranch style, painted an aggressively ordinary putty color.  Dark brown gutters.  Is there a thought in such a choice?  What is passing through the thinker's head?  Economy?  Some other T1-11-clad house?  A condo they pass every day on the way to work?  Or something totally unrelated?     A box score, a need for refined sugar, a pain behind the knee?  Here someone has carved their family name in a piece of driftwood and decorated the sign with statuettes of gulls.  Next to the gulls is inserted a pinwheel.  It is whirring so fast that you wonder if it will take off soon.  Cross a side street, Windsock.  On the other side a dignified if weathered Queen Anne with glassed-in porch.  You are closer to the core of the town.  On the north side of the Queen Anne houses give way to one-story commercial buildings, some brick, some plaster, all streaked with salt, algae.  Here is the fire department, signed with the name of the fire district, probably a vast, creaking universe of spruce and fir, silver snags, beaver marshes, estuaries, mountains of brown and red rock, headlands of boiling green, all served, as fire risk anyway, by twenty or thirty trucks and one or two red battalion chief Suburbans.  The fire department is an old auto service shop.  In places the yellow-green paint is peeling and you can see the old service shop sign peeking through.  

Follow Cove to its terminus and look down.  Where you expect to see more black/brown rock and rich foam there is a broad shelf, bordered on the north and west by a mustache of spiky silver and orange logs.   Someone has built a simple but solid stairway of treated lumber that takes you down by easy stages, past the layers of blue cobble and orange sand and cutting beach grass of the bluff at street level.

On the shelf is a shack, looking like a heap of driftwood that somehow detached itself from the mass.  Look closer, though, and you see a roof, a smokestack, a sash window.  Opposite the sash is a window of wine bottles on end with their bottoms facing out.  The diamonds between are glazed with mortar.  

Tonight

Tonight, while you pause at the end of Cove and look at the shack and the stairs and hesitate-- do I go down?-- You see a green glow in the wine bottles.  Someone is inside.  A beachcomber caught out late?  A photographer waiting for the perfect moment?  Kids playing spin-the-bottle behind bottles clearly already spun?  Lovers?  The smokestack, too, is breathing.  Lovers, you think.  They are lovers on a night like this.  There must be coffee in the downtown, you think, and you walk up Ocean Road.  

Central Valley and the Coast:  A Guide

Belmar.

Drive on Ocean Road and you can see the half-eaten remnant of the coast.  Here a pile of bowling ball-sized rocks, once hard rectangles, now barely recognizable as rectilinear things, in their present form more like gigantic grey and blue beans or rock candy.  There a tuft of salal and sea pink arcing in a wave over a cove of yellow and orange sand, like a teddy boy's hairstyle.  And further on a sign warning pedestrians away from the edge, itself slowly toppling, more eloquent in its attitude than in its original purpose.  If you are a scofflaw you will be rewarded by the hidden treasure of an old concrete staircase, now part of the tidepool garden it accessed.  It descends to greater depths hidden by sand and jagged volcanic rock; its rusting handrail helps no one appreciate the beauty of the public beach.  Around it spews a meringue of foam.  A distance back of the sea pink and yellow-green grass, safe for now apparently, lies a small parking lot and battered brown message board, covered with warnings and regulations and a barely-readable tide table encased in plastic.  

One evening Don's crew cab occupies the space close to the board.  He and Carrie Taylor sit in the truck, watching the spume rise and fall like New Year's confetti.  Occasionally the shore pines and salal bushes strain toward the rocks and surf, as if they were trying for a better view.  Don, not given to such things generally, hears himself saying "My dad's down there somewhere."  Carrie turns to him.  "Down where?  In the ocean?"  He looks beyond the cove below the parking lot, into the lowering grey over the horizon.  Where was the horizon exactly?  Where did the sky end and the ocean begin?  He had never thought of it before, but on the coast, there was so much water in the sky all the time, you could say the ocean flowed up in a way.  And the clouds, weren't they just as much soil as water?  Dust particles and so on?  So the land was up there too.  Without taking his eyes off the distant wash, he says "What am I doing here Carrie?"  He hears her say "You think too much."  She takes his hand and gives it a squeeze.    

Central Valley and the Coast:  A Guide

Belmar.

Drive south from Tie Camp for about a half hour and you pass the sign for Belmar, population 559.  Actually now it's considerably less, since an unusually destructive winter storm obliterated the marina that was the town's largest employer and one of the few reasons for visitors.  Two local residents, Tom Madigan and John Big Snake, have since rebuilt it, but the fishermen that moved up or down the coast when they realized the marina had gone had all changed their runs and found new and better holes.  It would take some time before they came back.

Belmar used to be a mill town, before World War II, but consolidation in the timber industry shuttered the mill and the loggers and operators left behind either stayed on if they could or simply followed the mill.  The town barely survived as a bedroom community until after the war, when a few developers saw an opportunity for business in the form of beach tourists looking for relaxation on the beach or a round of golf at the new course up at Tie Camp.  The town was reborn as a modest tourist destination, a place that offered the sort of plain, clean, reasonably-priced lodging that was the reason for being for most of the old mill towns on the coast.

If you turn left just past the sign on Chinook you climb a steep hill dominated by a few old Queen Annes that look across the highway, past the marina and into the dimpled green of ocean.  In one of the Queen Annes the rooms have been cleared of all signs of the previous occupant and covered with plastic and masking film.  Two painters can be seen either crouching at the baseboards with a sash brush or looking up at the ceiling as they roll.  When one rolls the ceiling he occasionally removes his safety glasses and wipes them with a cloth sprayed with cleaner.  The one rolling is usually Don Rosner, a painter recently laid off and put back to work by his neighbor, the new owner.   The man with the brush (usually) is Bill McCord, Don's friend and coworker, who came in on Don's call.  They had jumped at the chance.  The owner was in town doing research and staying at a hotel in Tie Camp.  Meantime they could stay in a nice old house on the beach, take frequent payments in cash, and even visit a marina that rented boats which they could use on the weekends.  The owner, Gil Binder, had practically insisted they take the weekends, because he did not want them "exhausted."  Whatever they left undone, in case they were called off on another project, Gil would finish himself.  Otherwise, Bill, Don had said on his first call, it's strictly T and M.  It was the kind of job that was so ideal you would talk about pipe dreams like starting your own company, leasing a van, putting decals on, the whole bit.  It was a way of making this kind of thing seem like more than just a short break in a monotony of shopping malls and clinics in the suburbs.

It was pretty sweet, he had to admit.  Don used to like to party, but that was a long time ago and lately he didn't mind so much a quiet drink and just some time to himself.  Maybe that was why he liked Bill; Bill was fairly reserved and didn't seem to mind if you just wanted to sit there and have a smoke and not say anything.  Don used to think that was strange, but the more he realized what you talked about, and the other guys on the crew, the more it all sounded the same and the more he came around to the way of guys like Bill.  Some nights they would even sit in the empty master bedroom with the curved glass with a couple beers and watch the lights of the distant fishing boats.  Don would imagine his dad out there, out for one last haul before coming in.  The sea had taken him.  Him and a couple other guys.  Sometimes even now he would forget and wonder if the winking orange dots out there were on his boat.  

One of these nights he dreamed about the ocean, in fact.  There was this island, he told Bill, that was connected to the mainland by a kind of bridge or causeway.  And the only way you could cross it was to ride this bus that ran out there.  It was like a city bus, one line, and it just ran to the island.  And it was like one of those rock islands out there, just rocks and a couple clumps of plants and a lot of birdshit.  And I rode the bus out there and sat on the island watching the gulls.  I would watch 'em fly in the wind out there.  The wind was high, always high, and lots of crossbreezes.  And it was like the gulls were playing in it.  They would dive bomb each other and do all these tricks and stunts and it was like, what other reason could they have but the hell of it?  Then they would come back down screeching and pick in the rocks for crabs or bugs or whatever.

Well, while I was sitting there watching the birds, I see this boat about eight miles out.  I can just barely see it, but it gets bigger and bigger and I recognize it.  It's my dad's old boat.  And my dad is steering.  He comes motoring up to the island and somehow ties off.  He climbs up to where I'm sitting and says "You ready?"  and I say "Sure" and we get on the boat and cast off.
"And that's it?"  says Bill.
"That's it," says Don.

Later they drive up to Tie Camp and Don decides this is the night.  He figured if he thought about Carrie three nights in a row he would call her.  But for some reason he has to tell her about the weird dream he had.  He would call her for that alone.  He would wait til he'd had a couple drinks though.

Central Valley and the Coast:  A Guide

Station Hill.

In the northwest corner of the neighborhood, in the retail-heavy district lining the freeway, you could find dollar stores, electronics warehouses, asian groceries, burger shacks.  Only the most stubborn features of that landscape that existed a hundred years ago remained now:  the creek that fed the irrigation lines now flowed through corrugated steel and under truss bridges.  The hills that once challenged horse-drawn carriages now provided "vistas" or "bluffs" for the developers.  All the dutch style white houses and interurban tracks, all the storefronts with their plate glass and elaborate signs, all the taverns with massive oak bars and unsmiling bartenders had gone for good.  The hard shell of applied technology had covered all and the rare glimpses of human faces were seen through a lens:  car windows, box store doors, bank airlocks.   So the life that animated Station Hill had gone underground, or more aptly under its own frozen mantle, dark gray fingers of liquid water under the ice.

Don Rosner felt his phone vibrating in his jacket while he scanned the candy aisle.  He'd learned to exit early on the way back from the coast to buy his hard candy at the dollar store.  There was a certain mix that only they carried and he ate them on his way to work.  Work was still a couple days off today, though.  He liked to have a couple days at the duplex to clean out his grip, detail his truck and all the other little shit you had to attend to before the busy work week.

He looked at the screen.  It was Bill.  They had been working together and Don liked his style.  He would even ask for him specifically when the foreman wanted him someplace else.  He told him he missed him at the coast, they could have double dated.  "Oh yeah?" Bill said.  "Who's that?"  Don told him about Carrie, the garbage compactor drinks, the scene in the parking lot, the night in his room. "You gonna see her again?" Bill said.
"I might at that."  Don said that maybe it was better Bill wasn't there, she may have turned his head.  Bill formed a picture in his mind:  a woman slightly heavy through the hips, big breasts, round face, sharp chin.  Around the eyes a secret knowledge to be released as reproof, disappointment or the gentle chiding of pillow talk.  This was the picture of a girlfriend of his own, a woman he had not seen or spoken to in years.  Her eyes had been green.  She was the closest double to Linda, Don's ex-wife, based on the little Don had told him.

This detailed picture, based on such shaky evidence, was in fact fairly accurate.  Don, however, had not seen her eyes on first meeting, but the way she bent over her work, the economy of movement of a person either completely engrossed in their work or so practiced that their motions were seamless and without hesitation or abruptness.  In the crew cab, as he watched the alder buds in a pink blur past his windows, he could say without hesitation that he loved her motion, from the very first.

Bill gave Don his news:  the project was on hold, some legal tie-up.  The crew was laid off for now.  "Shit," Don said.  "And here I'd psyched myself up to go back to work.  Not to worry, I have a neighbor who gave me some side work one time.  I think he's a professor or something.  I'll cut you in if I can."  Bill thanked him and said he had to go, his wife was waiting in the car.  "You do what you gotta do," Don said.  "Drive safe."

So when Don turned at Laburnum he was already thinking of Mr. (Professor?) Binder.  He noticed the pale grey square of sidewalk, the new fire hydrant.  Then he saw the old Brougham in Binder's carport.  You had to hand it to him, keeping up a classic like that.  In his own way, he had style.  He decided to clean his truck, so he parked at the end of his driveway, so that he and the truck were visible across the green chain link fence from Binder's yard.

Binder emerged just as he was finishing up.  He knew his man.     "Hi Don," he called.  Don crossed to the fence.  "Hi Gil.  How're things?"
"Pretty good."  Gil threw his shoulder bag in the car walked over.  "It's lucky I saw you just now."  Side work!  Don thought.  Right on Professor!  "I just signed some papers on a property on the coast and it's going to need a lot of work.  I was hoping you might be available, you and maybe a helper."
"That is lucky.  I just hear our crew was laid off, and I happen to know a very good guy that needs some work.  Where's the property?"
"It's in a little town called Belmar.  You know it?"
"That is weird.  I was just there, I mean, just north of it in Tie Camp.  I painted a Best Buy up there.  So you're buying a house there?  It's a beautiful area."
"Yes, I was there doing research and I kind of fell in love with it.  I had a little money put away and I just decided the place must have been what I was saving it for."  

Don didn't really know Gil all that well, but he guessed something signal must have happened.  He just did not seem the type of guy to be impulsive about a thing like buying a house.  He didn't look different.  Same parka, same tweed jacket, same glasses.  Same funny walk.  Same Brougham.  But something had changed.  They worked out the details and Don finished washing his truck.  Then he went inside, turned the game on, opened a beer and called Bill.  "Good news," he said.

Central Valley and the Coast:  A Guide

Tie Camp.  A coastal town that's never been much.  When the forest was all around, a tie camp for the loggers and mill operators and laborers that supplied railroad ties to the freight and logging companies in the region.  Early on, a muddy, gloomy, violent place.  The mill managed to keep the town going through the fifties.  Then a few beach cottages.  Now a stop between Rock River to the south and Pink Bluff to the north.  Still, incredibly, those same few cottages, keeping their registers, scraping and painting each summer.  More incredible still, a modest motor hotel, piggybacking on the guests turned away from the busier hotels in Pink Bluff.  Now the beneficiary of the expansion of Pink Bluff south in the form of an outlet mall.  Stop in at the motel sometime.  You can't miss the big cabinet sign, right off the coast highway:  The Lighthouse Motel.  The restaurant has good fish and chips, a decent selection of ales and beers.  Really the only night life in Tie Camp.  It boasts a wall of glass that looks out on a bluff over the ocean.  On Friday nights the lounge features canned music for dancing, sometimes singer-songwriters with amplified acoustic guitars.  In the off- season the restaurant and lounge are populated by locals and the workers from the outlet mall expansion.  One one of these Fridays a worker parked his crew cab in one of the many empty spots in front of the main entrance and walked through the sweet warmth of the lobby to the lounge stairs.  He found a table by the window, no problem tonight.

He watched the lights.  For minutes on end they would shine steadily, as if they were mounted on some distant headland, then would go dark suddenly.  Must be some dirty water out there, he thought.  He stirred his drink.  God damn his knee hurt.  Guess the drink didn't help.  But it fixed other things.  He looked around.  Most of the older types (easy, he was one of those 'older types') had gone home.  Some local guys were dancing on the little parquet floor with their girls.  One didn't even bother to take his measuring tape off his jeans.  The tune was "San Antonio Rose", one of his favorites.

He heard a glass break behind him and a woman's voice.  "Shit," she said.  He looked around.  She looked to be about thirty, thirty-five, overworked and disappointed about something.  She wore the burgundy apron and black clothes they all had to wear there.  "I'm so sorry," she said.  He wasn't sure whether she was apologizing for the language or the glass.  He figured it was the language.  "Shit, it's all right," he said.  At least he made her laugh.  "Hard night?" he asked her.  "Yeah," she said.  "Hard day too."  He thought about his long drive back to town, his stuffy hotel room, the blinking message light.  "Hey, do you ever get a break?  I mean, why don't you join me?"  He saw a jagged piece of glass under a chair.  "Don't move," he said.  He reached for the glass and put it on her tray.  "Thanks," she said.  She looked down at the glasses and schooners on her tray.  "Uh, I don't--  Sure."  He cocked his head.  "Wow," he said.  "That was not what I expected.  Usually it's no."  She smiled.  It came and went, like a short left-turn signal.  "Maybe you're asking the wrong people."  He stirred his drink.  "Yeah, you're probably right," he said.  "Anyway I'm well pleased I don't have to drink by myself.  I always thought they tasted better with someone."  She smiled again, this time longer.  "Me too," she said.  "I'm off in a few minutes."  He smiled back.  "I'll be here."  He sat back in the horseshoe and hummed in time to the music, tapping his fingers on the formica.

When she sat down her face had softened.  Maybe she's closer to thirty, Don thought, a bit nervous for the first time.  "You don't have to close?  I mean, I'm happy you're joining me, you don't know how-- but I figured you'd be here for the duration."  She cocked her head now and sipped through the tiny black straws in her drink.  They were drinking Long Island Iced Teas.  "Well," she said, sliding her glass back and forth.  "I was supposed to meet my boyfriend for a night out, but he had other plans."  Don put his hands on the table.  "Oh, shit," he said.  "I'm real sorry.  That really sucks."  She smiled with half her mouth and took another sip.  "Oh, it's ok," she said.  "I think I knew he probably wouldn't show up.  There was a part of me that thought he just might, but I think--" she slid her glass back and forth again.  "I think I really always knew it wouldn't last."  Don sighed and looked at his hands.  "I know how that goes.  Hell, I could be that guy."  His eyes widened a little and he stared at his drink.  "I AM that guy."  He shook his head, pulled out his straws and took a long drink.  The girl watched him and smiled.  "No, if you were that guy you wouldn't say that."  Don looked at her.  "I was that guy, but I think I just got tired of how it made me feel.  I'm Don by the way, Don Rosner."  The woman smiled and shook his hand.  "Carrie Taylor," she said.  "It's real nice to meet you," Don said.  "You too," she said.  "So what brings you to Tie Camp?"  Don sipped his drink.  "I'm a commercial painter," he said.  "We just finished a big project at the Tie Camp Outlet Mall, the Best Buy out there.  I took my vacation time now so I could see some of the coast.  My dad was a fisherman and I just wanted to see the ocean again.  I was down in Vegas before this gig."  Carrie stirred her drink.  "You staying here?" she said.  "Yeah," Don said.  "The company pays us a per diem to stay here and buy a few groceries.  It ain't much, but it's enough.  I'm so tired most days all I want to do is sleep anyway."  Carrie kept her eyes down.  "You have family out of town?"  Don stirred.  "Nah-- well, I have a little guy who spends most of his time with his mom.  We've been divorced a few years.  I've been on my own.  I see him as much as I can."  Carrie sat back and looked out at the ocean through the windows.  "That must be hard," she said.  Don looked out with her.  "It can be.  It ain't so bad.  We don't really get along, but my ex is basically a good person and she never makes any trouble when I want to see Sam.  It turned out as good as it could have.  God knows I was no picnic to live with either.  Fact, leaving me was probably the smartest thing she ever did."  He blew his breath out and drained his drink.  He let his glass down hard.  "How the hell did I do that?  We ain't even been talkin' for five minutes and I'm already talkin' about my divorce.  Come on Don!"  Carrie laughed.  "It's ok.  At least you're honest."  Don looked down.  "Nah, I'm just dumb."  Then he laughed.

It turned out all right.  They even danced a bit.  Then they had more drinks.  He thought they got into some kind of conversation about Jackson Browne, he couldn't remember.  She reminded him of Linda a little bit, and he wasn't sure if this was good or not.  If something had changed since his divorce it could be good.  That would mean that if he met another Linda that things could turn out ok this time.  That was if he wanted things to turn out at all.  He sometimes thought that Sam and his work was enough.  But there were other times-- like tonight-- when it was a real drag.  He would finish a big job somewhere and go back to the stuffy hotel room, the putty-colored phone, the ugly bedspreads, the ice bucket, the TV set, not always tired enough-- or sometimes too tired-- to go to sleep right away.  Then, he had to own, it was pretty lonely.  He turned from the window and looked down the aisle at the partition outside the bathrooms.  He had no idea of going back to the room with Carrie.  He didn't think that's what she was looking for, even if she gave the impression now that it was a possibility.  They'd had a lot of drinks.  And even if she was looking for something like that, and it pained him to admit it, he wasn't sure he would want to.  Didn't that same type of guy just let her down tonight?  And he wasn't doing so bad; he just wanted someone to have a few drinks with.  What was the use of hurting her feelings even more than they were already hurt?  He sighed and stabbed at the cubes at the bottom of his glass.  "You're losin' that killer instinct, Don," he said to the table.  "What was that?" Carrie said as she sat down.  Don looked up.  "Oh, I say I'm losing my killer instinct.  I haven't tried any of my lines on you yet."
"Come on Don," she said, sounding half-tired and half-indulgent.  "You don't use lines.  Rick used lines."  She put a lift on the word 'Rick', like a skier flying off a jump.  "You want another drink?" Don said.  She blew her breath out and looked at her empty glass.  "How many is that?"  Don looked at his, as if that would tell him how many had gone down before.  "I lost count."
"Then yes," she said, like a little girl peeling back her fortune in a cootie catcher.  "Your funeral," Don said as he twisted to signal the waitress.

He was relieved and disappointed when he saw Carrie head for her car.  He had been right not to press the issue.  She would go home and he would go-- well, not exactly home.  He would go wherever he went.  To bed.  They were in the chilly breezeway outside the front doors.     Then he was ashamed and glad when he saw her walk to the passenger side and try the door without even reaching for her keys.  How could he let her even head for her car?  They must've had at least five drinks apiece, all high-octane garbage compactor types.   Then the gladness was gone, replaced by a species of urgency and anxiety that he hadn't felt in a long time.  He even tried to fend it off at first, like a loud alarm early on a hangover morning.  God damn it, why now? he thought.  But then, was there ever a good time for this kind of thing?  What kind of thing, Don?  They were both dangerously drunk.  Nothing was going to happen.  One thing, she was not even getting into that car.  "What are you doing, Carrie?" he called.
"Going home," she said.  He didn't realize how drunk she really was.  "Belmar."
"Belmar?" he repeated loudly.  "You ain't driving down the block like that."  He walked over, double time.  "Come on, Carrie
," he said, softer.    "Give me those keys.  You can sleep in my bed, I've got a couch."
"You come on, Don," she said.  He couldn't decide if she was angry or amused.  "You sound like Rick."  Then she leaned on the fender, looking down.  At first he thought she had dropped the keys and he moved for them.  They were in her other hand.  She was breathing hard.  "Oh honey," he said.  "I'm sorry.  I should have stopped you.  Come on, let's just walk for a bit.  Okay?"  She put her hand on her forehead.  "Oh Don, I feel like shit," she said.  "I know," he said.  "Come on, let's walk."  She gave him her keys.

When she saw him pull out his room key she said "I knew it.  You're just trying to get me in the sack."  This time it was his turn to give her the half-smile.  "Believe me Carrie, even if I thought you wanted to, I wouldn't know where to start, I'm so tanked."  He jammed his car key in the knob.  "See?" he said, holding it up.  "My fuckin' car key."  They both laughed.  "Oh, jesus," he sighed as they walked in.  He felt for the switch.  "Why do you think I don't want to?" she said, before he found it.  He let the question settle into the warmth and general mustiness of a cheap coastal hotel in the off-season.  He even looked at the phone, almost hoping the message light was blinking; the signal that meant another job, another round of cheap hotels and watery beer in front of a flickering television.  He turned to her shape in the door.  "Well I ain't exactly what you'd call a catch.  And I guess I didn't want to get into anything when I could see you'd been let down once already."  She crossed to the blinds, opened them.  He turned on the lights.  She looked out at the black square.  "I know we're both drunk off our asses," she said.  "I just liked to think you wouldn't let me down if things were a little different."  He went to her.  "Hey, Carrie," he said.  "I had a great time.  I really like being with you.  Maybe my getting so drunk is my way of trying to do right by you, if you know what I mean.  I know that sounds fucked up."  He sighed and looked out, tried to find the lights on the horizon he had been watching earlier.  It seemed like a hundred hears ago.  Nothing out there but black.  His knee was hurting again.  Carrie sniffed.  Oh shit, he thought.  Oh shit, she's crying.  "Hey, come on," he said.  He took her to the bed.  "Come on.  It's gonna be ok."  She let him sit her down on the foot and he sat beside her.  He put his hand on her back.  He was terrified.  "Look, you get into bed, I'm going out for a smoke.  Ok?  See, there's the couch.  I'll sleep on the couch.  You get into bed.  You can worry about the rest in the morning.  It'll be a lot better in the morning, I promise."  She nodded, still sniffing.  She squeezed his hand.

He was relieved to find her in the bed with the covers pulled up.  He had smoked two cigarettes, hoping that gave her enough time.  He found some extra blankets in the closet and got into the couch.  It was a little too short.  Around two in the morning he got up and had another smoke.  His neck hurt like hell.

Something made him open his eyes.  Some of the darkness at the end of the couch had gone.  It felt like four, four-thirty.  "Don," she said.  "Come on, get off that couch.  You must be miserable."  He twisted to see her.  He must have made a sound.  "See?  Come up here.  I won't make you marry me, I promise."  He stared at the bed.  "Don.  You're keeping me awake.  I just want to sleep.  I know you do too."  He sighed, got up.  "Yeah, ok," he said.  He climbed in next to her.  She took his hand, drew his arm around her.  He was out like a light.