I probably should have split this into two parts. Thank you in advance for reading. You aren’t required to do it in one sitting. I apologize for annoying ads; it’s because, since I haven’t made any money on this (vanity?) project, realsurfers, I pay the minimum to Word Press. Hence, ads. I inserted a photo of, basically, the view from where Julia Cole’s mother’s house would be, to break up the chapter.

Though the manuscript (not a secret) lacks focus, mostly due to a stubborn desire to make side characters seem real, I have been trying to narrow in on the relationship between Joey and Julia. There’s more of that after the sunset photo.

SIDEBAR, with apology- The professor in a watercolor class I took at Palomar Junior College had a habit of grabbing my work before I was finished. “Done,” he would say. Of one painting I was ready to overwork and ruin, he asked if I loved the woman I was trying to render, his argument being that I should concentrate on shading and form, the pieces, or, since I lacked the skills for truly rendering an image, I could go for something impressionistic.

I don’t believe I’ve over-described Julia Cole, and since the narrator cannot know what she is thinking, we (presumptuously including you) have to rely on how she behaves. Yeah, like the way it should be. Maybe. Do I love Julia/Julie? YES, and if any character has to be real, complicated, vulnerable, tough, for me to consider her properly rendered, it is she. Or is it ‘it is her?’

CHAPTER THIRTEEN- SUNDAY, MARCH 30, 1969

            I didn’t get up early enough to surf. Rather, I didn’t leave early enough. I got onto I-5 from 76, got off at the Tamarack exit. Eight surfers out at the main peak in front of the bathrooms. Too small for Swamis, too crowded at the main peak at Pipes. I passed by the turn that would lead me to the grocery store, drove through the parking lot at Cardiff Reef. There were waves, but they were cut up by the shifting sandbars, chopped up by water flowing out of the lagoon on a big tide shift. Outgoing. Still, surfers were taking off on peaks, bogging down on flat sections the shorter boards couldn’t float over. I never got out of the Falcon, but I did stop, between cars, when a larger set hit the outside peak. The five surfers in the water were caught inside. Even that wave flattened out, split into two weaker peaks, and got wobbly in the outflow from the lagoon.

            Eleven minutes early, I parked the Falcon in the spot closest to the southwest corner, visible from the double door entrance. I grabbed three loose carts, pushed them together, and aimed for the entrance.

Weekends. Easter vacation. Excuses to go to the beach. A higher percentage of the customers at the San Elijo Grocery, Mrs. Tony’s to locals, seemed to be tourists, down or over from somewhere else. The state park across the tracks and the highway, extending along the bluff at Pipes to the lower, flatter area at Cardiff Reef, contributed customers. Suntan lotion and creams for sunburn, floaties and cheap shovel/pail/rake kits contributed to the independent grocery store’s bottom line.  

            Almost all the west, ocean-facing wall was glass. The view was of the road, the railroad tracks, the highway, the four-year old shrubbery that was just beginning to provide privacy for campers at the state park. The windows started at four feet from the floor, allowing for bags of dog food and fertilizer and compost, cheap beach chairs and portable barbecues, and extended twelve feet, four short of the sixteen-foot ceiling. The rolldown shades that only partially mitigated the afternoon glare were up.

The middle of three registers was empty. Mr. Tony was at the first register, his voice and laugh echoing off the exposed trusses and half-painted plywood ceilings, bouncing off the windows. He was just finishing up a story I had heard enough times to whisper the punchline as my boss revealed it to an obvious camper. “Can’t get that at no Piggly Wiggly!” Someone from the southeast was my guess.

            Mr. Tony dropped the smile when he saw me. I dropped my arms to my sides, slightly out from my hips, palms out, to show I was wearing the appropriate clothing: Chinos, sensible shoes, long-sleeved shirt with a collar, no hippie beads. My hair, over my ears for the first time in my life, was slicked back. I would wet it in the customer’s men’s room occasionally.

            I stepped toward the counter, ready to bag groceries. Mr. Tony handed the customer his change, watched me place the items in a bag, then nodded toward the back of the store.

            Halfway down the center aisle, I couldn’t miss hearing Mr. Tony with his next customer. “All these hippies. Kid’s thinking he’s foolin’ me with the hair; figures I’m okay with the duck’s ass, greaser look. Pretty soon the kid’s gonna look like a pachuco. Huh, Guillermo?”

            Mr. Tony and Guillermo both laughed. “Pachuco.”

            The grocery store’s office was behind the wall that held assorted beach and camping gear, tents and sleeping bags, lanterns. A string of Christmas lights, always on, framed the entrance to the storage area. A set of smaller lights framed a hand painted sign hung on the area’s most prominent post. “No public bathrooms.” There was always incoming freight in with the stacks of boxes and partial boxes of non-perishables the Tony’s had gotten a special deal on. Frisbees, hula hoops, tiki torches, garden hoses. Seasonal decorations were also stored there: Plywood Santas, American flags. There was a table for painting the paper signs for bargains and produce prices, bottles of red and green and blue and yellow paint, worn brushes stuffed in dirty water in an oversized pickle bottle.  

The door to the inner office was unpainted and unmarked other than a fading message in grease pencil. “Not a bathroom.” The door was almost always open because Mrs. Tony was almost always there.   

Mrs. Tony was sitting on the far side of her ping pong table desk, straight back from the door. Clear view. She had yelled “Jody” before I entered the storage area. She began moving aside stacks of invoices and customer account cards, each no less than a six inches high, to maintain her view. She looked up at the clock above the door, pulled out my card from the smaller of three stacks to her right, made a note with the pencil she kept in her hair, stabbed between the rollers and bobby pins and a scarf. Mostly red on this day, with white flowers.

“Jody,” she said again, standing up, “Did you see your apron?”

“Oh. I… get my own apron?” She looked at me as if I had said something rather rude or really stupid. “I mean, thank you, Mrs. Tony.”

“Yeah. Go help Doris.” She pointed through the doorway. “Good?” I nodded. I could see my Pee-Chee notebook under a stack of other papers immediately in front of here. She shook her head, waved her pointer finger. “I haven’t gotten a chance yet, Jody.” She glanced at the clock again. I checked it on the way out. 10:03.

…

Doris, late forties, about the same age as Mr. and Mrs. Tony, was ringing a woman up at the middle register. I walked up, trying to re-tie the cloth string on my new green apron. “Mr. Tony’s at the ‘so glad to see you’ register,” she said as I moved into bagboy position.

I looked over. Tony was talking to and laughing with a man, a bit older, dressed in a gray suit, fedora to match. There were no groceries on the counter.

Doris’ hair was also in curlers and covered with a scarf, hers in several shades of light green. Her customer was wearing a dark dress, with pearls, and what I had heard referred to as a ‘Sunday-go-to-meetin’ hat.’ The woman asked,  “Saving your good hair for your man, Doris?” Doris smiled and kept ringing up the groceries. Quickly, most of the prices memorized.

The woman nodded toward the man with Mr. Tony, both now at the front windows, each with a foot up on a pile of bags of dog food. She looked at the prepared pie on the counter. “We’re skipping the sermon, Doris, but we’re definitely going to the social.” She looked at me. “That’s where you hear all the good shit.” I did a sideways nod, tried to appear both impressed and mildly shocked.

“Right about that, Connie,” Doris said. She and Connie laughed. I nodded. I smiled. “Careful with Connie’s pie there… Jody.”

Connie looked at the name, hand sewn, in white, onto my green apron. “Jody? JODY. I’ve got a niece in Arizona named Jodie. JODIE.” I pinched a spot on the apron below the name. I pulled it forward. I looked down at it, looked back at customer Connie as if I might have grabbed the wrong apron.

Connie looked at Doris, looked at the total on the register, looked toward a tall, thin, metal shelving unit just to the right of the cash register, equidistant between the middle and south register, and attached with two strands of metal rope to a metal I beam post. Three wide, five high, each of the shelves contained an approximately even number of tan colored cards. The shelving unit itself was set on top of three wooden milk crates. With a metal gridwork inside to hold and separate glass containers, the crates were built to interlock when stacked, “Story’s Dairy” and “Fallbrook” was stenciled on the sides of each of the crates.

 Doris stepped toward the shelf. “Pie’s got to pass for homemade… JODY,” Connie said.  ”I have a nice serving dish, out in the car. Should work well enough with the hypocrites and sinners.” I looked at the pie, looked at the shelf Doris pulled the card from. Four down, middle. L-M-N. The pie wouldn’t pass. I nodded at Connie and smiled. She may have missed it. She was adding here initials to the card. “I meant the other hypocrites and sinners, of course, Doris.”  

…

Mid-day rush. I was rushing between Doris’s counter and Mr. Tony’s; bagging, smiling at the customers; smiling bigger when Tony said something that might not have been deservingly amusing or clever; smiles Tony had to know were fake, smiles few customers bothered to analyze. I nodded at customer comments, most of which didn’t concern the weather, did concern the damn hippies or the damn tourists or the damn surfers. “At least you’re not one of those,” at least one of the customers told me. Smile.

For the third time on this day, Mr. Tony used someone questioning my name as an excuse to break into his version of the Jody Cadence. “Jody’s bagging groceries, bringing carts back, too…”

Mr. Tony stopped, laid his left hand out and open, and toward me, and waited. This was my cue to join in the joke, add another line. This time it was, “At the San Elijo Grocery, the surf’s always in view.”

We did the “One, two, one two” together. Mr. Tony laughed. I tried not to look embarrassed. Part of the job. So glad to see you.

At two o’clock, Mrs. Tony came to the front to relieve Doris. She made sure I saw her shove my Pee-Chee folder into the shelf under the counter. She pulled an oversized watch with half of the wristband from one of the big pockets on her apron, didn’t really look at it. She made sure I got the message. Keep working.

There was a lull around four. I was at Mr. Tony’s register. “Joe DeFreines’s kid,” he was telling this customer, a regular, probably thirty years older than Mr. Tony. “Jo-dy. Joke. Marine Corps cadence, from… Korea.”

The man shook his head. “Army.” Mr. Tony stepped back. “World War Two, Tony, the durn leathernecks stole it. It’s… fact.” The man laughed, took both of his bags from the counter before I could move them to the cart, and held them against his chest. He took two steps, purposefully bumped into me with a shoulder. Friendly bump. “Good man, Joe DeFreines.” He took two steps more steps, and said, without looking around. “Tony’s okay, too, for a fucking Gi-rine.”

“Jo-dy,” Mrs. Tony, at the middle register, said, loudly, sharply, almost like someone calling cattle. Pigs, more like it, emphasis on the second syllable. She was holding my Pee-Chee notebook out and toward me, six customer account cards on top of it. She slid it, several times, toward the credit shelf as I approached. “Lots of regulars on a Sunday,” she said, “putting it on their tabs.” I took the folder. “You might want to learn some of their names.”

“I’m… working on it, Ma’am.”

Mr. Tony stepped toward us. Mrs. Tony gave her husband a message, eyes-only. Back off. He did. I set the Pee-Chee on the counter, spread the tab cards on top of it. Mrs. Tony said, “Ask your mother,” and turned away.

I reshuffled the cards, rearranged them, alphabetically, and put them away as quickly as I could. “It’s a lot of money, Mr. Tony,” I said, tapping the edge of the folder on the slight guardrail at the edge of the counter. “Lost Arroyo Investments. Are you… familiar?”

Mr. Tony looked at the folder rather than at me. He exhaled, popping his lips, slightly. “It’s not dirty. I guarantee you that.” He turned toward his next customer, one aisle away. “You ready, Honey?” She wasn’t. Not quite. Without looking at me, he asked, “You afraid to ask your mom?” Turning toward me, he read my expression correctly.

“Almost four-twenty, Jody,” Doris said as she returned to the middle register. “Your break. Take it or lose it.”

I acted as if I hadn’t noticed that Doris had removed the scarf and curlers and had brushed out her hair. Doris looked as if she wanted a comment. I was bagging, concentrating. Produce, one bag; ice cream, white, insulated bag; several cans of soup, bottom of double bag; one loaf of bread from a local baker, on the top; quart bottle of milk, TV Guide, straight into the cart. I gestured my willingness to push the cart. The older woman at the counter shook her head. Another church goer, I guessed, another dark dress with white pearls.

“Headed that way anyway, Ma’am. Mrs. …?”

“Not Mrs. anything anymore.” I stepped behind the cart. “Jackie, just Jackie.”

“Just Jackie, did you notice Doris’s hair?” Just Jackie turned and said something to Doris I didn’t hear; something Doris, self-consciously primping, pushing up the curls on one side of her face, seemed to appreciate. Doris gave me a different look when Jackie stepped next to me and set her purse into the cart. Embarrassed but appreciative, perhaps.  

            The shades across the front windows were a third of the way down, the sun just at the bottom line, the light half glaring, half insufficiently muted. Jackie kept one hand on the side of the cart as she and I walked. I was one set of windows from the main doors, even with Tony’s register, when I saw Julia Cole enter.

            It would be an over-romanticization if I said that, at just that moment, the sun, full force, dropped below the shade and Julia Cole was bathed in that light. Amber. That is how I saw it; pausing, stopping myself and the cart, and because I stopped, Jackie stopped.

            “I can manage from here… Jody,” Just Jackie said, looking at Julia Cole, looking at me, looking at Mr. Tony at the first register, looking back at me. I blinked, looked at Jackie. She was smiling as if she knew something about sunlight and amber and magic.

            Julia Cole, walking toward me, had her eyes on me. I was only slightly aware of Jackie pushing the cart toward her. Julia’s expression changed when she turned toward Jackie. Surprised, perhaps, at the woman’s expression. Still, Julia appeared to be no more than polite.

Julia Cole moved to her right, out of the glare. She stopped. She did not intend to walk any closer to me.  If it was a dare, I wasn’t taking it. I was replaying the previous seconds.

            Julia Cole was very close. She said something, not quite a whisper. I saw her lips move.

            “Ju-lie!” It was Mr. Tony’s loudest voice. “Surf up or something?” Julia Cole turned toward the voice. “Jody can take off and go if he wants.”

            “No. No, Mr. Tony, it’s not… that.”

            With Mr. Tony and Julia Cole in my periphery, right and left, I saw the silhouette in the alcove at the main doors. Only a hand and arm came out of the shadow. The hand was pointed at me. It twisted and flattened. Fingers out, the hand was pulled back. A summons. Duncan Burgess at the corner of the entrance alcove, just in the light, standing next to Julia Cole’s big gray bag.

            Julia Cole asked me a question. Before I could process, she repeated it. “Can you come outside? I mean, please.”

            I looked at my watch. 4:23. Break time. Ten minutes. I didn’t look around. I did hear Mr. Tony’s voice, mid-range volume-wise. “And how’s Christina and her little one?”

“Margarita. She’s… fine, Mr. Tony. Christine’s…” Julia’s laugh was surprisingly sharp. “Well, you know Christine.”

“Most popular bag girl we ever had.” Julia must have waited for the punchline. “And the worst.” Mr. Tony’s and Julia Cole’s laughs were several octaves apart; but perfectly synced, timing wise.

Julia gave me a look I read as meaning I was to go see Duncan without her.

Reaching under my apron and into my shirt pocket for the pack of Marlboros and the Zippo lighter, I headed for the alcove. I struck the wheel on the lighter at the point where the windows stopped. It flared up. Duncan noticed. I lit up as if this was normal. Duncan picked up Julia Cole’s bag, backed through the right-hand glass door and held it in the open position, allowing me just enough room to pass. I exhaled at precisely that moment.

Dick move.

            Duncan Burgess took a roll of photo paper out of the top of Julia Cole’s bag. He removed the rubber band, put it around his left wrist, unrolled and handed the stack to me. He watched me as I went through the first three pages.

“Contact prints,” he said. “Julie gets them… Palomar. College credits.” I nodded. Duncan looked at the cigarette in my right hand. He stuck out two fingers on his right hand. I allowed him to take the cigarette. I took the stack of photos. “Teacher likes her. Probably a pervert. Photographers. They all are. But… free developing.” Duncan took a drag, blew the smoke just to my left. “Julie takes… a lot of photos.”

Unlike the first three pages, 35-millimeter black and white images from sections of exposed negatives, the fourth, fifth, and sixth pages were almost full-page images of Chulo, in his rough and dirty evangelizing robe, and another man, taller, in a robe, barefoot, his left arm in a sling, leaning to his right on a single crutch. Jumper. The mid-section of the Jesus Saves Bus was behind Chulo and Jumper. The image of Jesus was between them.  

I looked at the second three pages, shuffled the first three in behind them, and studied each of the larger images. “Chulo is smoking,” Duncan said, moving to my right side. I looked at my cigarette between the fingers of Duncan’s left hand. He took another drag. “Next photo…”

In the next photo, Jumper’s crutch was falling away as his right hand was knocking the cigarette out of Chulo’s mouth. “Julie said they’d been arguing. Like, quietly. Check out the third enlargement. See? She zoomed in. Jumper is pulling something from a pocket of his robe, handing it to Chulo.” Duncan put his index finger on the photo. “There. See?”

Duncan took my cigarette out of his mouth and offered to put it in mine. I declined, possibly backing away too quickly. Duncan blew smoke between me and the photo. Dick move. Payback.

“You can’t see it.” It was Julia Cole. She had come out the entrance door and was looking over Duncan’s shoulder and directly at me. I looked away from the photo and looked directly at her. “They weren’t arguing,” she said. “Not exactly. Chulo was… he was crying.” I blinked. Julia Cole blinked.

Chulo, in the last photo, was smiling. And crying. Jumper was smiling. I let go of the papers with my right hand, allowing them to roll up against my thumb.      

“Actually, Julia Cole, I think they both were… crying.”

Julia Cole smiled. I lost focus on Duncan Burgess, directly in front of me, and everything else. “I do think so,” she said. “You’re… right.”

I would like to believe, and still do believe, that Julia and I froze for the same number of seconds. Her eyes were alive, studying mine, and mine, hers.

“Hey, Junior…” Duncan came back into focus. “You gonna help or not?”

“Not.”

I stepped back, handed the roll of photos to Julia. Duncan stuffed the cigarette butt in among many others in the waist-high concrete pipe ashtray at the side of the entrance door. I tapped my watch. “There’s nothing I can do, and… and my break’s over.”

Julia and Duncan exchanged looks. If Duncan looked angry or frustrated, Julia looked disappointed. She held the roll of photos upright, spun it in little circles, looking past it. At me. Disappointed, angry, resolved; then neutral, then a ‘Fuck you, then,’ Julia Cold look.

Duncan moved between Julia and me. He removed the rubber band from his wrist and double wrapped it around the roll of photos, giving Julia Cole a ‘told you so’ look. He turned toward me; moving his face closer, too close, to mine. I didn’t step back. I was trained not to. Duncan made a growling sound as he pushed past me and though the exit door.

Mr. Tony met Duncan ten steps in. Tony gave him the same side hug he had undoubtedly given Julia. “How’s your dad, Yo Yo?”

“No one calls me that, anymore, Mr. Tony, but… he’s, um, better.”

“You’re excited for prom and graduation and all that, I expect.”

“Can’t wait.” Disingenuous.

Mr. Tony slapped Duncan on the back. “Oh, come on, Duncan!”

Julia Cole stepped closer to me to allow a couple, tourists, possibly newlyweds, with matching sunburns, to keep holding hands as they entered the store. She looked past them and at Mr. Tony and Duncan and the couple. The door closed.

“So, Miss Cole, you’re… angry?”

“I had no… expectations. It was Duncan.”

“Oh? But… why does… Duncan… care so much?”

“He has his reasons.”

“You don’t ask.”  

            Julia Cole turned toward me. Her expression said, “I don’t need to” before she did.

            I wanted to keep Julia Cole talking. I wanted her that close to me, close enough that the only thing in my field of vision was her. I was more aware than usual of my pauses, the lapses, the seconds I spent replaying previous seconds, trying to remember, trying to catalog exactly what she said, and how she looked, exactly, when she said it.

            “I had one,” I said. “Yo-yo. Duncan.” Pause. “Sparkly.”

            “We all did. Phase.” Short pause. “Sparkly? Yours?”

            “Mine? Yeah. Sparkly.” Pause. “Walk… walk the dog.”

            “Basic.” Pause. “Good trick. Easy.”

            “Yes. The, um, trick… the one I liked… most, was…” I moved my hand up and down a few times, palm down, then flipped it over, pantomimed throwing the yo-yo over my fingers, then flipping my hand back over. “It’s like… switching stance.”

            Julia Cole was staring. I was a fool. Ridiculous. She smiled. Politely. “It… is.” She held the smile longer than I could comfortably handle. She was studying me. I looked away, politely, allowing her time to drop the smile and continue the studying. “What do… you think?”

            I pointed at the roll of photos. “Chulo smokes. I believe Jumper… maybe he doesn’t. Or… he quit.” I pulled out my father’s lighter. “Zippo. That’s… a guess.”

            “Zippo?”

            “Marine Corps logo. Maybe, if you enlarge it, the image, more…”

            “I will.” Julia looked appreciative in the moment before she looked past me and into the store. I took the opportunity to look at her. When she seemed to sense this, I looked where she was looking.

Duncan and Mr. Tony had moved just beyond the first counter. Duncan pulled folded bills from an inside pocket of his windbreaker. “On account,” he said. Mr. Tony took the cash, pulled out several account cards from the rack, top left box, A-B. He shuffled through them, set one aside, took his pen out of his shirt pocket, wrote something on the card and showed the card to Duncan. He looked past Duncan at Julia Cole and me. I looked away. None of my business. She looked away and toward my car at the far end of the lot, then back at me.

That may have been that lapse, the pause that caused Julia Cole to speak. “I have… other photos. Negatives. I could… How late do you work?”

I refocused on Julia. “Today?”

She didn’t wait through the guaranteed pause. “We saw all the red lights, Swamis, from my, my mom’s house. Cops. Fire engines. We went down. It was… you don’t get it, do you, Junior? That… night. After…”

            I didn’t get it. Julia Cole looked frustrated, even irritated.

            “We saw it. Saw… it. It. Chulo. Portia. Gingerbread Fred was still there. Everything. It was… I just thought… maybe… you… might…”

I wasn’t keeping up. There was something in my mental image file, the view from Swamis and up the hill. It was a photo in an old Surfer magazine. In color. Maybe it was a cover photo. “From my mom’s house” she had said. It would have to be…

“What is… wrong with you?”

Julia Cole moved a hand over her mouth the second after she asked that question. All I could see was the back of her hand and her eyes. All I could hear were the words. “What is… wrong with you? What… is… wrong… with you?”

Three seconds, ten, I have no idea how long I was staring at Julia Cole. She was backing away and into the parking lot. I backed into the edge of the exit door. I took my eyes off Julia Cole, spun around, and pulled it open. Duncan and Mr. Tony both looked in my direction. In twenty-one steps I was even with the counter, with them. I stopped, pivoted, ninety degrees right. “Duncan Burgess, do you know Jesus?”

I pivoted back. I walked to Doris’s counter, everything slightly out of focus, unaware she was speaking. I grabbed a bundle of San Elijo Grocery paper bags, ripped off the paper ribbon that held them together, stuffed as many as I could into a shelf at Doris’s knee.  

            Doris put a hand, flat, on my chest. “So, Joey, I figured, I don’t have a man at home… currently; why not let my hair… down?”

I looked at Doris, tried to smile. I looked to my right. Duncan was gone. Mrs. Tony was at her husband’s register. Mr. Tony slid the account card and Duncan’s cash toward her. “Two-fifty-five on Burgess.” Mrs. Tony opened the register, took the bills from her husband, and began counting them. Mr. Tony looked at me. Mrs. Tony looked at him. Both looked at me before I could turn back toward Doris. What was wrong with me?

Doris looked at Mr. and Mrs. Tony. Her expression was hopeful. That’s what Julia’s expression was. Had been. Hopeful. Optimistic. Temporarily.

            “What is wrong with me,” I whispered.  

“Doris; you look… gorgeous.” Mr. Tony’s body language, the raising of his shoulders, suggested he was suddenly aware the compliment had been in his loud voice. He didn’t turn toward his wife for her reaction. He walked toward the front windows.

Mrs. Tony, walking toward Doris and me with the draw from the other register stuffed in one of the pockets of her faded green apron, stopped and looked at her cashier. She looked over at her husband, a shadow in the glare, as he used the pulley to lower the first of the window shades all the way down. Mrs. Tony touched her own hair, let out an only slightly exaggerated sigh, and pointed at me. “Julie. Beautiful girl, huh Jody.” I couldn’t respond. “The money; ask your mother. Huh?”

“Okay.”

“Okay.” Mrs. Tony turned toward Doris. “You look… nice… Doris. Even… gorgeous.”

“Oh? Oh, I… I was just hoping I’d look… okay.”

“Better than,” Mrs. Tony said.

 …

            It was nearly sunset when I walked across the parking lot. 6:32. Daylight savings time had kicked in and the sun would set, officially, at 7:13. The tourists and inlanders and visitors and customers were all headed elsewhere. The wind was, if anything, slightly offshore. There was time to catch a few waves if I made a quick decision and went somewhere close.

 Something was stuck, face up under the driver’s side window wiper. It was a flyer for an Australian surf movie. “Evolution.” There was one on the bulletin board on the wall between the entrance alcove and the window wall. Or there had been one. Friday, April 4, Hoover High School, seven pm. Saturday, April 5, San Dieguito High.

There was something under the flyer. More pages. Seven. Photo paper. Stiff. Slight curl. Slightly damp. I looked at the images as if they were flash cards, moving each to the back of the deck, going through them again and again. The photos were so dark that the artificial light of camera flash and flashlights and headlights burned out any details: Firefighters and cops, Dickson and Wendall; a woman in a robe holding back Portia. One photo showed the unmistakable anguish on Portia’s face. Another was of someone’s body, burned, against the wall. In another, the body was being covered with something more like a tarp than a sheet. In the last photo, Gingerbread Fred was on his knees, looking up. Up.

            “Tear in the shroud, “I said.

            I couldn’t look at any of these images for more than the time it took to move to the next photo. I couldn’t allow any of these images into my memory, a file too easily pulled. Too late. It was imprinted, permanently. I could describe each of the photos now in more detail than the actual photographs showed.

            That was what Julia Cole had seen, witnessed, photographed. I tried to look again at each of the enlargements. It didn’t work. All I wanted to see, or imagine, were Julia’s expressions when she was trying to tell me about that night; how sincere, raw, honest she looked; how beautiful. All I wanted to do was collapse.

            I didn’t. I went through my ring of keys, separated the one for the Falcon, I rolled up the pages. There was a note on the back of the flyer: “Portia said you are your father’s son, and you might help. I have more…” Out of room, the words went sideways. “…waiting… for you.”

I looked around the lot. Julia Cole wasn’t there. Of course, she wasn’t.

…

            Vulcan Avenue runs parallel to Highway 101 and the railroad tracks, and in front of the San Elijo Grocery. There were several cross streets. I took one, went up two blocks, turned left. I looked at the houses, looked toward the water. I went up another block, headed south again. I stopped at the middle of three empty lots, the place where the best view would be. Optimal view. Surfer magazine view. Swamis Point.

Two houses farther south, on the uphill side of the street, a VW mini-bus, grey-green, white top, was parked in front of a house. “Julia’s mom’s house,” I said. Partially hidden by the VW and some shrubs, the back of the Jesus Saves bus was parked in the driveway. “Portia said you are your father’s son, and you might help.” I repeated the phrase. “Waiting… for you.” Me.

            A light went on inside the house, behind the sheer curtains. I drove on. I pulled a u turn at the end of the block, coasted by again before I dropped back down to Vulcan and turned right. When I got to D street, I turned left. The Surfboards Hawaii shop was on my right. There were no cars on the block, either side. Several storefront businesses were on my left. David Cole C.P.A. was one of them. No lights. I got to 101 and turned right.

At Tamarack, parked on the bluff, lights to the south to lit the underside of the clouds. There were black lines on a dark ocean in front, breaking from a peak, gray soup to a gray beach. The rights looked better than the lefts. Still, I was replaying phrases. “You are your father’s son.” Portia. “What’s wrong with you?” Julia. “Waiting for you.” I reread the note that had been on the windshield by the light of my father’s flashlight. I straightened the photos, without looking at them, and placed them in a yellow notebook and slid that into a PeeChee.

I stayed on 101 until it curved away from the beach. Carlsbad Liquor was on my right, still open. Baadal Singh’s truck was parked nearby. “Gauloises bleus,” I said, out loud. “Picasso smokes these.” I considered stopping in, possibly buying a pack. I didn’t.

“Swamis” and all revisions are copyright protected, all rights reserved by the author, Erwin A. Dence, Jr, Thanks for respecting this, and for reading,