I backed my way through the middle of the semi-circle and back to the window. I didn’t look around to connect faces with questions and comments. I was somewhere else, imagining what magical waves were breaking beyond the hills that were my horizon, running a mental slide show of photos from surfing magazines, little movies of things I had seen. I kept one image a bit longer. It was from above highway 101, above the railroad tracks, across the empty lot just south of the Swamis parking lot. There were the dark green trees, two palm trees beyond them, one of the large gold lotus blossoms on a white stucco wall; and there were distant swells, on that horizon, already bending to the contours of the underwater rocks and reefs, ready to wrap into Swamis.

I didn’t bother to consider how long I had been detached from the reality of an event as surreal as this wake, or memorial, or potluck. That was me, detached. Everyone seemed to know this. Damaged. Some knew the story, others were filled in. There had to be an explanation for why I was, so obviously, elsewhere.

Standing at the window, all the conversation was behind me; the clattering and tinkling, the hushed voices telling little stories, the sporadic laughter. 

The yellow van with the two popout surfboards on top pulled out of the driveway, a black Monte Carlo behind it. I didn’t recognize the car. I looked around the living room. Wendall and Dickson were holding court with someone over by the sideboard, a two-thirds gone bottle of some brownish liquor between them. Langdon was gone. A black Monte Carlo seemed about right. Oversized. Pretentious.

A yellow Volkswagen Karmann Ghia, top down, was coming up the hill. It passed the Hayes Flowers van. Different yellows, softer, warmer than the van’s. There was a woman at the wheel, very colorful scarf over her head, sunglasses. The Monte Carlo stopped. The VW stopped. Langdon. Yeah, it was him. He had an am out the window. The gesture was ‘turn around.’ The woman in the Karman Ghia gave Langdon a brush back with a raised hand, followed, when the Monte Carlo moved on, with the woman’s right hand, up, middle finger out. She moved her arm halfway back down, then up again.

“Yeah,” I imagined myself saying, “Fuck you… with a half twist.” I may have added the half twist with some later recalling of the day. It doesn’t matter, it’s there now.

I had seen Deputy Wilson before, at the Vista substation. He was the latest in a line of deputies identified as “New Guy.” Those who lasted long enough got to be referred to by their last name. A nickname was a higher honor. Wilson didn’t have one that I had heard. I hadn’t caught or bothered to remember his first name.

Wilson half-leaned into the Karmann Ghia once it stopped in the driveway. The woman looked away from the deputy. She saw me in the window. She pointed. She waved. I took a second, then waved back. Wilson gave me a gesture, hands out, palms up, chest high. As in, “Really?” I mimicked his gesture, palms facing each other. The New Guy let her proceed.

            After several adjustments, the Karmann Ghia was pointed out, getaway position, the passenger side almost touching the two-by-six fencing on the corral. She removed her scarf. Afro. Not huge, but out there enough to make a statement. She looked at herself in the rearview mirror, pushed the sunglasses up into the Afro, prescription glasses remaining.

The woman swiveled in the seat, picked up a thirty-five-millimeter camera with a medium length telephoto attached, used the top of the windshield to stabilize it, and aimed it at me. Snap.

            I was in the center of the window, my arms still out. I moved backward and sideways, back into the room, bumping into a man I knew from somewhere; someone from the PTA or the School Board, or somewhere. “It’s that pushy Negro reporter woman,” he said. “Writes for that hippie rag. She did a big… ‘expose’ on the water district. Don’t know how she got past the Deputy.”

            “Wilson. The Deputy,” I said, suddenly realizing where I had seen the man’s photo. “The hippie rag, the expose; favorable rates for certain… constituents, as I recall. The Enterprise didn’t run the story for another two weeks. And… wait; you’re still the director.”

The Water District Director looked at me for a moment before turning away. “Wendall,” he said, brushing past Mr. Dewey. I didn’t look away quickly enough. Mr. Dewey smiled. He may have mistaken my look for a nod. He was already headed my way as I turned back to my spot in the middle of the picture window.

“I heard that, Joseph,” he whispered. “Good one. We need an alternative to the war mongering, corporate loving press.” Mr. Dewey was somewhere over half-sloshed, sloshing some sort of brown liquor in one of my father’s cut crystal glasses. “The North County Free Press. I should make it required reading for my Social Studies class.” Mr. Dewey leaned in a little too close to me. “I mean…” I leaned away. “…You read it… right?”

            I tried to correct my overreaction by leaning in toward Mister Dewey as if I was ready to share a secret. “You know, Mister Dewey…” I looked around the room, back to the teacher. “Most of these people do, too.” I whispered, “Also. And… there’s some… nudity. Sometimes. Hippies, huh?”

            Mr. Dewey nodded and went into some forgettable, mumbled small talk. War in Asia, civil rights, threats to the middle class. It was less than a minute later when Mr. Dewey pointed my father’s glass, with Detective Wendall’s whiskey sloshing around in the bottom, toward the photograph of my parents. “Never understood… guy like Joe DeFreines; almost a John Bircher… conservative. He was a Marine, fought the Japs, big war hero.” He took another sip. “Korea, too. Also. Another war we didn’t win. And then…”

            Mr. Dewey seemed to realize he had gone a bit too far with this. He tipped the glass up high enough to get the last of the whiskey.

“Well, Mr. Dewey, Sir; it’s traditional, really, isn’t it? Kill the men. Take the women.”

Mr. Dewey looked into my father’s glass. Empty. I looked around the room, past the dining room, and into the kitchen as if I was looking for someone in particular; long enough for Mr. Dewey to notice, to feel just a bit more uncomfortable. I turned back toward the window.

“You know, Joseph; your father was a busy man.” I knew he was looking from the unfinished garage to the unfinished fencing. “I’m not teaching summer school this year.” I shook my head a bit, trying to understand. “I have time, that’s all. If I had a place like… this, I…”

“Yeah. Needs… time. Work.”

Mr. Dewey tapped the empty glass on the window. “The Falcon wagon? That yours… now?”

“I am making…” A chuckle stuck in my throat. “Guess so.” Mr. Dewey cleared his throat. “I passed the… driving tests.”

“You. Of course.”

I whispered, “They didn’t ask, I didn’t admit… anything. I am getting… better.”

“Of course, Joseph.” Mr. Dewey turned and looked at the selections of food that were still on the table as three different women brought in an assortment of desserts. He patted my shoulder as fourteen other men and seven women had done, coughed out some whiskey breath, and headed to where my father’s partners, Wendall and Dickson, were filling glasses no one had yet asked for.

“Better,” I whispered to myself and the window and the Falcon and the property that needed time and work.

… 

            The reporter woman was standing next to my father’s partners. She declined a drink in a fattish sort of glass, three-quarters full, offered by Dickson. “Smooth,” he said, offering it again with a look that was really a dare. She was asking questions I couldn’t quite hear; questions that seemed to make the detectives uneasy.

            The reporter was holding out a notepad, three quarters of the pages pushed up, and was tapping on the next available page with a ballpoint pen. Dickson made a quick grab for the notepad.  She pulled it back. Quicker. Dickson pulled a very similar, palm-sized notepad from his inside coat pocket, opened it, went through some pages, shook his head, closed the notepad, put it back into the pocket. The reporter closed her notepad.

            “So,” the reporter asked, “The official word is no word?”

            “Correct.”   

            Wendall pulled a pack of Winston non-filters from his left outside coat pocket, a Zippo lighter with a Sheriff’s Office logo, exactly like my father’s, from the right pocket. He opened the top with a forceful snap on his wrist, looked around the room, pointed toward the kitchen. Partway through, Mrs. Wendall tried to stop him. He pointed to the cigarette in his mouth with the lighter and headed to and out the open sliding glass door.

            I moved a bit closer to the reporter and Dickson. “No, Detective Dickson, I am not getting any help from Downtown,” she said. I moved closer, between the pineapple upside down cake and a plate of frosted brownies. I took a brownie. “You could just tell me how an experienced driver could…” Dickson looked at me. The reporter looked at me, took the glass from the sideboard, downed it in one gulp, stepped toward me. “You,” she said. “Lee Ransom.” She extended a hand before the alcohol she had thrown down her throat forced her to spread her fingers, lean back, and open her mouth wide enough and long enough to emit a totally flat and involuntary, “Haaaauuuuuh.”

I made a quieter version of the sound she had made, leaned back at the waist, and said, “Oh. The Lee Ransom.”

Dickson laughed and said, “Smooooth.”

Lee Ransom moved closer to me. “Oh?” She paused for the exact same time as I had. “Meaning?”

            “Oh, as in, I thought Lee Ransom must be…”

            “White?”

            “A… man.”

            “Do I write like a… man?”

            “Yes. A… white… man.” Lee Ransom couldn’t seem to decide if I was putting her on. “College educated, new journalism, ‘I’m part of the story’… white… writer. Good, though. I read you… your… stuff.” I looked at Dickson. “He reads it.” I made a quick head move, all the way left, all the way right, and back to Lee Ransom. “They all read it.”

            Lee Ransom may have wanted to chuckle. She didn’t. She extended her hand again. “Thank you, Jody.” Dickson snickered. I took Lee Ransom’s hand, trying to use the grip my father taught me, the one for women. I imagined him, telling me; “Not too strong, not too long, look them in the eye. No matter what they’re wearing… cleavage-wise.” Lee Ransom was in black; tasteful, one unbuttoned button short of conservative. I didn’t look at her cleavage or her breasts. I was aware of them.    

“I was hoping to speak to your mother, Jody.”

            “Joey. I go by… Joey.”

            Dickson laughed. “Pet name. Jody.” He laughed again. “Private joke.” Laugh.

            “My friends call me Joey.” I did a choking kind of laugh. “Private joke.”

            Lee Ransom gave me a ‘I don’t get it’ kind of smile.”

            “You. My mom. Talking. Probably… not.” I nodded toward the hallway. A woman was leading a couple toward the living room. “Sakura Rollins,” I said, “Since you’re taking notes.”    

“Thank you… Joey.” Lee Ransom tapped on her closed notebook. “She and her husband, Buddy, own a bowling alley. Oceanside. Back Gate Lanes.” She nodded toward the couple. “Gustavo and… Consuela Hayes. Flower people. Poinsettias…. Mostly.”

Sakura Rollins came into the living room from the hallway, stopping close to Dickson. Mrs. Hayes turned to thank her, taking both of Mrs. Rollins’ hands in hers for a moment. Mr. Hayes exchanged a nod with Dickson, declined a drink, put a hand on his wife’s shoulder, turned her toward the door, walked with her toward the foyer. Neither of them looked to their left, into the living room. The husband walked to his wife’s left, between her and the rest of us. They both bent, slightly, to look at the flowers. The woman rearranged the pots and vases, slightly, before they went onto the porch.

I mouthed, “Flower people.”

Lee Ransom turned toward Sakura Rollins. Mrs. Rollins, her expression blank, shook her head before Lee Ransom could ask her anything.

Theresa Wendall walked up to Dickson from the kitchen, leaned around him to look down the hallway, then looked at Sakura Rollins as if asking for some sort of confirmation. Dickson set down a glass and wrapped his right hand around Mrs. Wendall’s upper arm. She took a breath, gave Dickson a look that I didn’t see, but one that caused him to release his grip.

Sakura Rollins followed Mrs. Wendall down the hallway. Mrs. Wendall stopped, allowing Mrs. Rollins to open the door and announce her. “Theresa Wendall.” Permission. Access. Mrs. Wendall went into my parents’… my mother’s room. Sakura Rollins closed the door, leaned against the wall between that door and the door to Freddy’s room, and pointed toward me, twisting her hand and pulling her finger halfway back.  

Mrs. Rollins met me halfway between the door and the open area. She put a hand on each of my shoulders. “Ikura desuka,” she said, her voice soft and low. “It means… ‘How much does it cost?’ Not in a formal way. Slang. Soldiers. It is… can be… insulting. Thank you for not asking your mother.”

“I didn’t… ask… you.”

“No, and you wouldn’t.” She tilted her head. “Your mother…”

“I have… other questions.”

“Yes. There’s time.” Sakura Rollins released her right hand. “You’re… doing well, Joey.” She pointed toward the living room. “Your parents… strong.” I wanted to cry. “As are you. As strong as you need to be.”

            I backed up, three steps, did a half bow, unreturned, turned, and headed back toward the living room.   

Lee Ransom was declining Dickson’s latest drink offer, a half glass this time. She walked over to my father’s lounger. I followed. “Shrine,” I whispered. She looked closely at the scar on the palm of my father’s left hand. “It’s just… just the one hand,” I said. “Half stigmata.”

Lee Ransom may have smiled as she leaned in toward the portrait. I almost smiled when she looked back at me.

…

I had to sit on my mother’s little bench on the porch to put my shoes on. Lee Ransom stepped down onto the concrete pad, the part of a sidewalk my father had completed. “Optional today,” I said.

“I… should have,” Lee Ransom said, “to show proper respect.” We both looked at her practical black shoes. She looked toward the many cars parked on the lawn and in the driveway. She pulled her sunglasses down and over her regular glasses. She pointed at the Falcon. “You just… keep the board on top?” I nodded, stood up, jumped off the part of the porch without stairs. “So, Joey; which one of these cars is your mother’s?”

Freddy, a toy revolver in his hand, ran past Lee Ransom, jumped off the porch, swung around me, and fired five shots as the younger Wendall brother ducked behind someone’s car, making a mouth sound with each shot, following the volley with “Got ‘cha!” 

“I think he ducked,” I said as Freddy crouched and hurried down the lawn and took shelter behind the Wendall family station wagon. Wendall’s kid popped up, took a shot at Freddy. “Dick Tracy model. Snub nose 38.” Lee Ransom and I had made it down to the flatter, gravel and bare earth part of the property. She was still looking at the various cars. “I gave it up. Guns. Switched to…” I went into some version of a swashbuckling stance… “Swords.”

The younger Wendall brother ran in front of Lee Ransom and me. She swiveled, threw back her coat, drew two fake pistols from fake holsters, and shot at the kid. Two shots. The younger Wendall kid looked surprised, but instantly grabbed at his chest, both hands, staggered dramatically, and fell to the ground.

“Regular Annie Oakley,” I said.

“Well,” Lee Ransom said, blowing the fake smoke from the end of each fake pistol, “Where I came from, we played cops and robbers with real… cops.” She fake-holstered the fake pistols. “Real guns, too.” She shook her head and laughed.

I was about to tell her I never played the cop, always the robber, but we both turned when we heard someone being slammed up against someone’s car. “Surrender, Jap!”

Larry Junior had Freddy off his feet and pinned against the Wendall’s red station wagon. Freddy dropped his pistol and looked at me with a desperate, ‘You have to help me’ look. Larry Junior’s expression, moved from Freddy to me, was a defiant, “Do something, Jap” look. The younger Wendall kid leapt to his feet. Lee Ransom took a step back, then a few more, in the direction of her car.

Theresa Wendall, carrying a large Corning Ware serving dish with a glass cover in both hands, came out of the front door. Wendall and Deputy Wilson came around from the back of the house. “Lawrence Oliver Wendall, Junior,” Mrs. Wendall said, quite loudly.

Lawrence Oliver Wendall, Junior looked at his mother, stepping off the porch. He looked at his father, throwing a cigarette butt onto the lawn. He looked at Freddy. My brother’s expression had become something close to a smirk. Larry Junior looked at me, just coming around the front of the Buick, left hand out, right hand in a fist. He let go of Freddy.

Theresa Wendall’s high heels failed to make the transfer from concrete to lawn. She fell forward, the dish ahead of her. Launched.

None of this happened in slow motion. All of us on the lawn and the porch were frozen when the Corning Ware dish hit the splotchy lawn, the glass lid skimming like a rock on the water before skidding to a stop on the gravel. The contents of the Corning Ware dish were belching out as it hit on one edge and flipped forward just enough to hit the next edge. Then the next. It landed upright, one-fourth full, amazingly close to the lid.    

A few moments later, in slow motion, I mentally replayed what I had seen. Ten seconds, maybe. I was standing at the hood of the Wendall’s station wagon, my right hand still in a fist.

Everyone else had moved.

Freddy and Larry Junior and Larry’s younger brother were on their hands and knees, scooping food and bits of grass and gravel into the Corning Ware dish, chipped but unbroken.

Deputy Wilson was crouched down but not helping. He was looking at me. “I said, Jody, I notice you have chickens.” He nodded toward an unpainted plywood chicken coop with just enough of a fenced yard for six hens and a rooster.

“Chickens. Yes… we do.” I looked toward the porch, expecting to see a crowd. No one. I looked at our chicken coop, back at Deputy Wilson. “We don’t let them out, Deputy Wilson. Coyotes.”  

Deputy Wilson nodded, stood, straightened the crease in his uniform pants. “Scott,” he said, “Scott Wilson, Jody.” He adjusted the tilt of his hat, turned away, showing his clean hands to the three kids whose hands were lasagna sauce colored.

“Scott,” I said, quietly, “Joey. Joey, not Jody.”

“I worked on cases with… Your father knew his shit.”

I had already looked away, but turned, nodded, and smiled, then turned away again. Polite enough, I thought. Deputy Scott Wilson took the dish from Larry Junior and walked toward the DeFreines family chicken coop.

Theresa Wendall was sitting in the driver’s seat of the station wagon, door open. Her husband was standing between her and the door, leaning over rather than crouching.  Her left hand was on his right arm. She was crying. Detective Larry Wendall removed his left hand from the door and put it on his wife’s left hand. He kept it there for a moment, then lifted her hand from his arm, shifted slightly, and opened the back driver’s side door.

“I can help you turn around. Okay?” Mrs. Wendall didn’t answer. “Theresa?”

Theresa Wendall made the slightest of gestures with her left hand before moving it and clutching the outside ring of the steering wheel. Her husband waited a moment before coming closer. This time he crouched. “I shouldn’t have talked to her, Larry.” It wasn’t a whisper.

“Probably not.”

Deputy Scott Wilson came back with the emptied dish, took the glass lid from the younger Wendall kid, handed it to me. Toward me, as if I should be the one returning it. I looked at the three kids before I took possession of the dish. Both hands.

I approached the station wagon. Theresa Wendall looked past her husband, used the left sleeve of her dress to wipe both of her eyes before regripping the steering wheel. Detective Wendall stood up, stepped back, turned toward me. He looked embarrassed, almost angry. He slammed the back passenger door, reopened it as he passed, turned, and took the dish from me. Lid in one hand, dish in the other. He set them on the roof and turned toward his kids, Freddy, Deputy Wilson, and me. He lit up a cigarette, went around to open the very back door.

“Lasagna and Bermuda grass,” Mrs. Wendall said, breaking into the half-laugh kind of crying.  “Probably improved the taste.” She looked at me for some reassurance, some sort of sympathetic response. I barely knew the woman. Cops’ wives. I knew something about what that meant, what it required. “Your mother,” she said. “I am just so… sorry.”

I have no idea what I look like in these situations. Not cold and uncaring is my hope. Helpless is what I was.

A few moments later, I was over by the Karmann Ghia trying to convince Lee Ransom this wasn’t worth taking notes on or photos of. “Personal,” I said. Larry Junior and the younger Wendall kid were in the red station wagon, now, with some direction from Deputy Wilson, turned and pointed down the driveway. Freddy was leaning into the back seat window. All three kids were laughing.

Only a small percentage of those coming out of the house had to put their shoes back on. Deputy Scott Wilson was back directing traffic. Wendall lit up a cigarette with the butt of his previous one, waved at his children, and headed back up to the house. Theresa Wendall, eye makeup mostly wiped off, waved at me, and because I was standing next to her, Lee Ransom, on her way out. The younger Wendall kid did a finger shoot at Lee Ransom on the way by.

Lee Ransom jerked to one side, shot back. Just one finger gun, this time. She looked at me. “Regular Annie Oakley, huh?” She looked at the horse that was leaning over the barbed wire and over the front seat of Lee’s car.

“Tallulah,” I said. “My mother’s… pet. Mostly.”

“Like the actress; Tallulah Bankhead.”

“Yeah. From the old movies.” I stepped over to the little room adjacent to the covered stall, all constructed of plywood, still unpainted. I pulled out a handful of grain, closed that door, pulled up the plywood cover on Tallulah’s stall. The horse looked at Lee Ransom. Both walked over toward me. “My dad called her Tallulah Bankrupt.”

Lee Ransom held out both hands, cupped together. I transferred the grain. She fed it to Tallulah, the horse’s head through the opening, with me still holding the cover up. I stuck the hinged two-by-two onto the sill to prop the cover as Tallulah ate and snorted, and Lee Ransom giggled.

“Joey, what do you know about… grass; that whole… thing?

I looked back at the house, looked at the cars passing by. I took out a pack of Marlboros from the inside pocket of what had been my dad’s black coat, lit one up with two paper matches. “I’m the wrong person to ask, Lee Annie Ransom. No one tells me… anything.”

Lee Ransom brushed at Tallulah’s mane, ran her hand down the horse’s face, held the horse’s head up. “Someone told me that… if you…” She leaned over, blew a breath into Tallulah’s nostrils. “They’ll remember you.” She let go of the horse, pointed to my pack of cigarettes.

I pushed the pack toward the reporter, took the cigarette out of my mouth to light Lee Ransom’s. I blew some smoke into the stall, inhaled, blew a semi-clean breath into Tallulah’s nostrils. The horse reared back, hitting my face on the way up and back. I reacted. Lee Ransom took a drag on her borrowed cigarette, let out most of the smoke, and observed.

Though I didn’t do anything to Tallulah. I must have looked as if I wanted to. I did… want to. The effects of washing out the stall had rotted out the plywood just enough that my shoe punched through. I had to kick it back and forth several times to get my foot back out.

Lee Ransom came up very close to my face. She blew a very slight bit of breath toward me. Cigarettes and the vague remains of the whiskey, a bit of the skanky cheese and vinegar from a salad. “I don’t fucking believe you. Joey. You see, you observe… everything.”

“No. Not nearly.”

“Enough.” Lee Ransom turned away. “Tallulah, lucky Joey didn’t hit a stud, huh.”

“Lucky.” I turned, started walking toward the Falcon.

“Joey.” I stopped. “When your dad got that… wound… You were there. Correct?”

I stopped, crooked my left leg, butted the cigarette out on the sole of my shoe, turned halfway around, twirling the filter between a finger and thumb. “I was five, as you know, but that is the story.”

“It is. Yes. Your dad saved your life.”

I almost waited too long before responding. “He is… was… it’s his nature to be… heroic.” I turned fully away from Lee Ransom.

“Yeah. And, uh, which car did you say is your mother’s?”

“I didn’t say.”

“No, you didn’t. But, Joey, really, I could use a quote… from you.”

“Make up one. Fine by me.”

Lee Ransom had her camera up and aimed at me. “Half stigmata!” She took a photo.

“Swamis” copyright 2020, Erwin A. Dence, Jr. All rights to the original work and all revisions held by the author.

COMING UP in the next chapter, next Wednesday: Joey and Dangerous Dave confront DUDE/HEAD JERK bullying JULIA COLE at BEACONS.

MEANWHILE, still dealing with bad alternators for my eventual surf rig. I will probably still be whining about it next SUNDAY. Hope you’ve got swell coming your way.