Tag Archives: surf fiction

Another Long Chapter from “Swamis”

Posted on by under "Awkward Guy" Franco Bertucci, surf fiction, surf novels

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,

Chapter 10- Fallbrook High, Two Days After Chulo’s Murder at “Swamis”

Posted on by under "Swamis" the novel, real surfers, surf novels

                        CHAPTER TEN- THURSDAY, MARCH 27, 1969

There were, at Fallbrook Union High School, three large, rectangular, concrete planters between the administration buildings and the band room and the gravel student parking lots on one side, the Senior Area and the majority of the school’s classrooms on the other. The planters featured flat tops for seating. The sides were angled in for leg dangling. The gymnasium, cafeteria, and the boys’ locker rooms were on the downhill side, beyond a paved parking lot. Closer to the planters were two trailers that offered chips, pre-made sandwiches, and ice cream bars, and milk, and apples, at lunch time and the mid-morning ‘nutrition’ break.

Since my sophomore year, I was the ‘fly’ part of ‘you fly I’ll buy.’ I usually went up the ‘out’ side of the shortest line. I was only challenged a few times, never twice by the same boy. Reputation, mostly. Most acted as if they were fine with it.   

The express service happened often enough that it became a standard for me to offer the girl who let me cut the line a creamsicle or a fudgesicle, her choice, with a nod toward my friends, Gary and Roger. “On him,” I would say. If the girl asked which one, I would answer, “Your choice.” One or both of my friends would smile, perhaps flipping the offended girl a peace sign, often returned with a giggle for any other girl in the line and a sort of stern look toward me. I returned any thank you with a “not my money.”

From my first days in high school, I spent most of my non-class time, non-library time standing, usually with a book or notebook in my hands, next to the spindly tree closest to the action; studying, memorizing, and not-exactly-secretly observing the rites and rituals, the fights and romances, the cliques and the loners. Eventually this became the spot where the surf crowd, those who tried it and gave up, those who stuck with it, friends of my very few friends, hung out. On, but not in the planter. That was my spot.

It was lunch time. Murder was the topic. Gary was talking. A crowd had gathered and grown. Too big. I pulled Gary up onto the downhill side of the planter. I moved over to my tree, a Pee-Chee open, listening, trying to appear as if I wasn’t. Gary continued talking about the blackened wall and the cops and the TV crews; not loud, but for Gary, who rarely broke his cool, he was borderline enthusiastic.  

             And Gary was receiving great feedback. There was a rhythm. Words, response. The volume was increasing, the pace quickening. Enthusiasm building.   

            Someone jumped up next to Gary, pumping his arms as if he had been in the Swamis parking lot. The rhythm was broken. Gary looked at the chubby kid with the big, black-rimmed glasses. “Squintz?”

            “Ray Saunders.”

            “Oh, sorry… Ray Saunders; did I call you… Squintz?”  

Some in the crowd repeated, “Squintz.” Ray Saunders couldn’t just jump back down. He took two blind steps backwards, into the dirt and redwood bark, bumping against me.

            Gary, resuming his story, said something about the lingering smell of burnt flesh. The crowd reacted. Ray Saunders and I didn’t join in. “Brain DeFreines,” he said, “you’re the head dude of the surf dudes; why weren’t you there?”

“Because, Ray Saunders,” I said as I looked down at his feet, one of his wing-tipped shoes crushing one of the ground cover plants, “I was here.”

“Sorry, Joey,” Ray Saunders said, moving his foot off the plant, removing his glasses, leaning in toward me. I may have shrugged. I did close the folder. Ray put his glasses back on, looked at the top of the folded Free Press that was sticking out of the top of the PeeChee. “Are you in this week’s… edition?”

“Not by choice.”  

“So, Joseph DeFreines, Junior; you, all cool and shit; you probably blew your GPA by not giving your oral… presentation in Poly Sci.”

“I don’t do oral… presentations. Ray Saunders.”

“Today’s mine.” I nodded. “You’re afraid? You?” I nodded again. “Well, Brain DeFreines, I am scared shitless; and I’m doing mine… anyway.”

“Call me… not that. Ray Saunders, you are… too close to me. And you are staring.”

“Kindergarten. Before your… accident. Morning classes.” I was staring. “We were friends. You, me, Frankie Terrazas, Danny Turner, and, oh yeah, Grant Murdoch. Friends. Do you remember… anything about… us?”

I visualized a tall kindergartner pulling a red wagon with a much smaller kid inside; another kid, in glasses, running alongside, carrying a too-big-for-him American flag.

I tried to see past the reflection in Ray’s lenses; “What was I… like?”

“You were five. We were all… five.”

“Frankie Trousers,” I said, after a longer than usual delay. “What happened to him?”

“Terrazas.” Ray hit me on the shoulder. “Shit, man… Joey; you do remember.”

“Bits and pieces.” I looked at the students below Ray and me. Several were looking at us. “Don’t do that…” I hit Ray on his shoulder with my left hand. “…again.” We both shook our heads. Slightly. “But, Ray, we were all… friends?”

“Then? Yes. You know… Fallbrook. Dads get transferred… other shit.” He took a big breath, adjusted his glasses. “Grant turns into a dick. Shit like that.”

 The rhythm of Gary’s lines, and the crowd’s reactions, had been ongoing.

Carefully avoiding the plants, I stepped around Ray Saunders, onto the flat concrete surface, and next to Gary. Gary stopped talking. The crowd noise stopped. I pulled Ray forward and pushed him against Gary. “New nickname for Squintz,” I whispered.

Gary looked at Ray Saunders, looked at me. “Joey DeFreines has an announcement.”

“Fucker,” I whispered, putting my left hand up and over my eyes as if it was to lessen the glare. “Ray Saunders… here…” I raised my voice. “He will be… hereafter, known as ‘X-Ray.’” There was no immediate response. “Oral presentation,” I whispered to Ray as I took a step back into the bark, aware of where the plants were.

 Dangerous Doug and then one of the Billys, Billy ‘The Hawk,’ started chanting, “X-Ray.” Others followed. Ray Saunders raised both arms. Gary pushed him off the planter. The two students closest to the falling students separated. X-Ray, stumbling forward, caught his balance by crashing into the Hawk in a sort of full-frontal hug. The crowd reacted. The Hawk spun Ray around, grabbed him around the waist and lifted him up. X-Ray flexed his arms again.

The response, the loudest to that point, was almost instantly muted. Someone said, “Greenwald.” Most of the students looked toward the administration building.

The crowd of students parted. The vice principal, coatless, came through. “Gary. I saw you on TV. Where’s your running mate?” Gary pointed behind his back at me. “The other one.” Gary didn’t move. Greenwald pointed at me. “DeFreines, out of the planter.”

Other students moved aside to reveal Roger, sitting with a sophomore girl, one who had chosen creamsicle, on the Senior Area side of the planter. Gary did a hang five pose on the edge of the planter, slid his right foot up to make it a hang ten pose, with a bit of an arch, and jumped down. Roger leaned over, gave the sophomore girl a kiss on the forehead. The Hawk yelled out, “Overshow,” looked at Vice Principal Greenwald, and whispered, “Overshow.”

The sophomore girl ran around the far end of the planter and joined three giggling classmates. She held her next giggle for no more than three seconds. Roger approached the Vice Principal with his hands out in front of him, wrists together and up. Greenwald shook his head, looked at Gary, then looked up at me.

The bell announcing the end of lunch rang. “DeFreines, out of the planter.” I started to do a salute, dropped my hand onto my chest instead. The Hawk shouted “Freedom!” Dangerous Doug shoved him aside. Greenwald led Gary and Roger toward the administration building. Neither of my surf friends looked back at me.

X-Ray Squintz Saunders hung back near some wooden benches, looked at me. I walked to the corner of the planter, squatted, and jumped, both feet even. I said, “Parallel stance.” Ray Saunders chuckled as if he knew what I had meant.

…

The arrow in this map of the actual Fallbrook Union High School campus pretty much points to the place where most of this chapter in the fictional story takes place.

…

Ray Saunders and I turned into a breezeway in the middle of the second block of classrooms. Lockers, two high, lined both sides. The locker I had claimed since my freshman year was in the middle, top row, west side. Optimum location. Scotch taped to the door was a drawing, pencil and ink, partially colored in, scotch taped to the door. It was almost a cartoon, someone behind a window, expressionless. “Surf’s down, Jody” was written at the bottom in red crayon.

Ray moved closer to the drawing, pulling up his glasses. “Oh. Grant fucking Murdoch.”

             “Yeah.” My books and notebooks were tucked under my left arm. I pulled out the latest North County Free Press from one of the folders with my right hand, stuck it under Ray’s right arm. He took it out, unfolded it, held the front page up to the locker next to mine. He looked at the photo of me at the window during the wake for my father, looked at me. I tucked two fingers under the right side of the drawing and pulled. I allowed the drawing to roll up and fall to the concrete. I turned the combination lock, opened the locker.

I put my stuff, and the drawing, into an already stuffed locker. I took out a yellow notebook, “Political Science” on the cover. I pulled out several other newspapers, handed them to Ray. He looked at them quickly, folded them neatly, handed them back. I tried not to slam my locker but did.

“Lee Ransom didn’t have any photos from the murder.” I took a breath.

“You could just read yours… your presentation.” Ray took a breath. “You probably have it memorized. You could… Hey, Joey; I know you’re going to go… to the scene. Can I, maybe…? I have a car. I could act like I don’t know you.”

“No. Ray. See…? I am glad we were friends, Ray, back… then.”

“X-Ray. Yeah. Then. I get it. You’re… you surf, you’re cool. You have enough friends. You…” Ray took several breaths. “Everyone is afraid of you. You know that… don’t you?”

“Are you?” Ray shook his head. I moved closer. My eyes were close to his glasses. “I have hurt people; I have struck out… because…” I closed the locker, spun the combination lock. “You see it, don’t you… X-Ray? Life. I’m scared shitless… and I’m doing it… anyway.”

All rights to “Swamis,” copyright 2020, and all subsequent changes to the manuscript are claimed by the author, Erwin A. Dence, Jr. Please respect these rights. Thanks.

ALL RIGHT, now that the internet at my house is back and running at its usual speed, it is as if the three day lull was easy. SPEAKING OF LULLS… Hope to have some surf-related stuff available on Sunday. Meanwhile, spending too much time on SURF ROUTE 101.

“Swamis” Chapter 9- Day after Chulo is Murdered

Posted on by under "Swamis" the novel, surf fiction, surf novels

CHAPTER NINE- WEDNESDAY, MARCH 26, 1969      

My room was on the wrong side of the house for late afternoon light. It isn’t like I needed windows for studying. Still, when the phone rang, I closed the two books that were open on the thrift shop desk, pulled out the latest copy of The North County Free Press from under a third book, stuck it inside a Pee Chee folder, and hustled up the hallway.

“DeFreines residence.” Pause. “Roger and Gary?”

In a phone scam we had devised and successfully worked twice before, “Gerry Lopez” meant the waves were good, “Micki Dora” meant they weren’t.  “Jim Morrison” and “Jimi Hendrix” hadn’t worked on two other occasions.

“Joey!” I had to move the handset away. “Accept the charges! Joey!”

“Okay. Thank you, operator.”

Between Gary screaming some indecipherable series of syllables, I heard, “You should… have… been… here.”

 “It can’t be that good, Gary.”

I let the long cord at the back of the phone base drop. The cord unwound as I walked into the living room. I set the base on the top of the stereo console. If I had set it on the coffee table, the cord to the handset would reach my father’s lounger. He designed that way. I walked toward the big window. Four feet short. 

Outside, Freddy was walking backwards, leading Tallulah around the corral, dropping pieces from a leaf of alfalfa. On the phone, Gary and Roger were yelling over each other at me.

“What? Wait; burned up? Swamis? At the wall. Who was it?” Pause. “Okay.” I walked back to the console, turned on the television. “Channel eight?” The TV took a while to warm up. “They’re there?” Pause. “No news. Old movie. Dialing for Dollars. Bob Dale.” Pause. “Detectives? Which detectives?” Longer pause. “Langdon, and… fuck no, he’s not in charge.”

Gary and Roger were both inside the phone booth at the 101 side of the original parking area. Others were waiting to use it. “Roger, how many is ‘an amazing number of people?’” Pause. “That many? And they’re… crowding up to the rope?”

In my imagined image, a hundred people were standing on the asphalt, looking over the rope. Most of the grassy area along the wall to the SRF compound was behind the line. There was, according to Gary, on the wall, twenty feet or so from the Southeast corner, a burn mark that “pretty much matched the gold bulbs on top of the wall. That was where the guy was burned up.”    

“Who?” Pause. “No, of course the cops aren’t saying. I mean, someone’s saying… something.” Gary interrupted Roger. “Someone said… who? ‘Limpin’ Jesus.’ Fuck, man!”

 “Fuck!” I took a breath. “Chulo.” I ran several images of Chulo through my mind: Chulo with the robe and the wooden cross around his neck, Chulo behind the wheel of the Jesus Saves bus, Chulo at the wake, Chulo with Portia in the Swamis parking lot. “Chulo?”

“Chulo. Yeah.” Other voices were demanding time on the phone.

“Call me back. When you get home. When it’s… free.”

Outside the window, Freddy, his face close to Tallulah’s, looked up and flipped me off.

“Good evening, San Diego.” I refocused on the TV screen. “Phillip Reed. I usually cover Criminal Justice… court activities, that sort of thing.” Phillip Reed almost winked, almost smiled. “I will be standing in for a week or so. A little deserved vacation time for our esteemed colleague… the real anchorman. So, to begin: Whoa! Horrific murder overnight at Swamis, a beach park in the North County. We have a crew on site. Film at eleven.”

            …

Our porch light and the weak lamp from the foyer were pretty much all the light. Gary and Roger were practically dancing in and out of my shadow. Our shadows extended down the slope of the yard.

“So, Joey,” Roger said, “There was a station wagon. In the lot. Like, nine passenger size. Painted-out windows. ‘CBS’ and ‘Channel Eight’ were lettered on the side.”

“But it, the murder, it happened… last night?”

Gary shoved Roger out of the light. “Yeah, but there were still a couple Sheriff’s Office patrol cars, a motorcycle from the Highway Patrol, and a tan Buick with a Del Mar Fair decal on the back bumper… Obvious cop car. And the tall detective, he’s…”

“Wendall.”

“Yeah; and the chunky one… he showed up in a stripped-down VW. Practically a dune buggy. Can’t be street legal. He…”

“I’ve seen it. Dickson. But what about… Langdon, Roger; what was he doing?”

“Creepy guy,” Gary said. “Mostly he was walking back and forth, acting like he wasn’t checking everyone out who was hanging on the rope.”

“He did talk to this black chick; not, like, nicely. She has to be the one who… She’s taking photos, maybe she’s talking to, you know, Wendall. And…”

“Langdon wasn’t stoked on that. He was mostly giving your guy, Uncle Wendall, shit.”

I ignored Gary’s comment. Roger stepped in front of him. “So, then, the chick from channel eight… very cute, she and a cameraman, and another dude, they’re over at the bluff.”

“So, of course, we all cruise over there. Everybody did.”

“All the… local surfers… Joey.”

“Roger means… you know who; she was there.”

“I didn’t ask.” Gary moved to one side of my shadow, Roger to the other. “Okay, so she’s there. Julia Cole. Thanks. Her boyfriend… he there, too?”

Roger punched Gary in the shoulder. “Julia Cole. Told you he’d ask. Pay up.”

“I didn’t ask.”

“He didn’t ask.”

“How did she… seem?”

“Hard to say,” Gary said.

“Hard to say, Joey.”

…

“Joey, you awake?”

“No, Freddy, I am not.”

I opened my eyes. I was on the couch, leaned back, a notebook spilled open on my lap. Other papers and books were spread on the coffee table. The television was on but the sound was off. Freddy moved several more notebooks and sat down to my right.

“Me, neither.” Our mother was just visible in the kitchen. The phone was on the coffee table. “He’s up,” Freddy yelled, half leaning over me. “But are you… awake? I mean, really.”

“Atsushi, the news is…” Ruth DeFreines walked over to the television, turned up the sound. “The news is… bad.”

“Atsushi,” Freddy said, “Mom called you by your Jap-a-nese name. At-su-shi.”

“Middle name, Butt-lick.” Freddy tried to grind his elbow into my right leg. I shoved him away. “Oh, I believe your Jap-a-nese middle name means ‘guy who licks butts.’”

“No, Atsushi.” Freddy shoved me, harder. I stood up and assumed a fighting stance. Freddy laughed. “Hakaru means ‘better son.’” I dropped my hands, slid my feet next to each other, and fell back into the couch. Freddy leaned over me. He whispered, “And also, ‘guy not to be fucked with.’”

“Okay,” I said. We both smiled. I shoved Freddy away.

“Boys.”

“Our top news story…” It was Phillip Reed. “The horrific murder, last night, in Encinitas. You will, no doubt, remember our intern, Pamela Hodges. Well, she’s graduating from San Diego State, and she led a crew up to the North County… today. We now have the film.” Phillip Reed let out a noisy breath. “Stand by.”

My mother was in position, standing in front of the console. Freddy moved to her left, I to her right. The screen went blank for a moment, followed by a shot of the ocean on an obviously sunny and cloudless day.

“Pipes,” I said. “Down from Swamis.”

“It is a very sad day here at a very lovely spot.” It was a woman’s voice. Pamela Hodges. The image panned to the right, north, past the wave line at the beach break, past the waves at the point. The image refocused on a palm tree hanging on the bluff.  

The image abruptly switched to a young woman in a sport coat and skirt, standing, seemingly alone, on the bluff, a microphone too close to her face. Pamela Hodges looked to her left, possibly a signal to the cameraman. “Although the information we’ve received from the Sheriff’s Office detectives is… minimal…” The young woman repeated the eye shift, adding a head nod toward her left. The camera angle stayed on her. “What we do know is…”

            The camera panned away from Pamela Hodges and through a crowd watching her. Someone, off camera, had the onlookers move aside. Still, some were caught looking as the angle zoomed in on the white compound wall at the far end of the parking lot, then continued panning to the right.

            “The Jesus Saves bus,” I said. “It’s usually there.” Stupid. “No, of course. No.”

            Close to the highway end of the wall, three uniformed deputies, out of focus, were standing behind a rope stretched between wooden sawhorses. There was a burn mark, almost matching the gold lotus blossoms on the top of the wall. The scene was as Gary and Roger had described it, as I had imagined it would be.

“Behind this wall is the Self Realization Fellowship. A place of peace and meditation. All that was shattered when, last night…” The image pulled back. The deputies were in focus for a moment. Members of the crowd were in focus for a moment. All strangers, then Gary, Roger, Julia Cole, Duncan Burgess, Rincon Ronny. Pamela Hodges was out of focus for a moment. “Last night a young, so-far-unidentified man, was beaten, positioned near the wall and set alight.”

The image stayed on Pamela Hodges too long. She couldn’t hold the expression. She looked down, let out a breath to keep herself from smiling. She was on TV.

The image switched to Phillip Reed at the station. He did look serious. “We do have some further information. We also have more from Pammy… Pamela Hodges. Pammy just graduated from State… San Diego State… It’s coming up, after these messages.” 

“Phillip Reed.” The phone rang. “He knew your father.” She looked back toward Freddy and me as she walked toward the kitchen. “Too late for… cocoa?”

Freddy elbowed me. “Did you see your ditching-school, dickwad friends?” I nodded. “Gary and Roger? Truant… and smoking.”

I didn’t answer.

As our mother was returning, a mug in each hand, Freddy said, “He’s gone, mom.”

“Leave him alone, Hakaru.”

 I had been gone, replaying the few moments from the coverage: Gary and Roger, front and center as the camera panned and zoomed. Both were smoking. Gary was smiling. Julia Cole, Duncan Burgess beside her, was taking photos of Pamela Hodges and her crew. Julia lowered her camera when Gary, rather than just passing in front of her, stopped. Duncan extended a hand to push Gary further. Gary looked at Julia. Roger looked at the TV camera and lowered his cigarette. Both of my surf friends moved into the crowd.

It was Julia Cole’s expressions that ran through my mind, again and again.

Freddy elbowed me again. “Pammy’s back, Atsushi.”

“The name of the victim, evidently beaten, possibly, according to witnesses from last night, posed in a sitting position next to the wall, has not been released. There is…” Pamela Hodges moved her microphone around in a sort of wave. “There is speculation among the local surfing… community that the victim is… one of them.” The reporter looked to her right. She appeared angry but quickly reset her practiced neutral expression. “Speculation.”

“It was Chulo,” my mother said.

“You get that from Wendall?”

“Larry? No. Someone at the station. Betty Boop… your father called her. Margaret.”

“Why would… Margaret… call?”

“Larry. Wendall. We were supposed to… He had to go on base, anyway. We were going to have lunch. Just at the PX. Snack bar.” I tried not to react. “He didn’t, of course. This. Chulo.”

On the screen, Pamela Hodges took a deep breath. “We do have a witness, someone who was here last night.” The TV reporter turned to her right. There was a space between her and the witness. “Fred Thompson.”

“Gingerbread Fred! Shit!” I didn’t look around to see my mother’s reaction.    

Fred Thompson didn’t move. He looked straight into the camera. Pamela Hodges, also looking into the lens, sidestepped toward him. “Can you tell our viewers what you saw?”

Gingerbread Fred blinked, looked at the microphone in front of him, looked sideways for an instant at Pamela, then looked back at the camera. Intently.

“Fred,” Freddy said, moving closer to my side. “Like me.”

“Not like you, Frederick Hakaru DeFreines,” our mother said, putting a hand on Freddy’s head, “You’ll get a haircut.” She gave Freddy a push, turned and looked at my longer-than-the-dress-code-allowed hair. “Not like you, either.”

Gingerbread Fred moved his hands toward the camera. “Light. Bright light. Poof. In the air.” He paused, blinked several times. “Damn fools. Gasoline, the vapors… they… flash.” He started to cry. “I knew Portia was… waiting. I tried to help. Can’t run… anymore.” Pause. Blink. “They were running. Away… to their car. Black. Lights… out.”

Still looking straight at the camera, Gingerbread Fred Thompson went from a low growl to engine sounds. “Loud muffler.” He got louder. The reporter started to pull the microphone back. Fred moved with it. He didn’t look at her, he looked at us. “The… other guy was on fire.”

Fred threw his hands out to his sides, spreading his fingers. Pamela Hodges stepped back. The camera stayed on Gingerbread Fred, but the field of vision widened. Lee Anne Ransom, behind and to Fred Thompson’s right, was taking photos. Julia Cole, Duncan, Ronny, and Monica were to his right. Petey Blodgett stepped between Ronny and Monica. Fred dropped his hands and took a step back. Petey took two steps forward and, once even, put an arm around Fred’s shoulders. Fred looked at Petey for two seconds, then half spun toward him, his head dropping to Petey’s chest.

“No, no!” Pamela Hodges stepped between the two men and the camera. She was out of focus, the microphone in her left hand, her right hand making a slicing motion across her throat. The image went fuzzy, then black.  

Phillip Reed appeared. “Stand by folks.” He looked to his right. Questioning look. He turned back to the camera, flipped his left hand up. “Okay then, folks, we’re following this drama a bit longer.” The camera stayed on an angry Phillip Reed a half second too long.

Our phone rang. Loud. Freddy and I both jumped. Our mother stepped away and answered it. “You’re, oh, downtown. Yes, Larry, we are watching it. Channel eight.”

On the screen, Deputy Scott Wilson pushed between Julia and Duncan, stepped between Petey and Gingerbread Fred and Pamela Hodges. He turned his back to the camera. A man wearing dark glasses and a black coat with a Nehru collar was just visible, standing behind and between Duncan and Ronny.

“Langdon,” I said, looking at my mother, still on the phone. “Gingerbread Fred.”

“Yes. They…” She put her right hand over the speaker. “Larry says it was a major… mistake, letting him… be… there.” My mother, listening to Larry Wendall for a moment, had a half smile on her face. She took her hand off the speaker. “Langdon’s mistake.”

“No one will know that” I said, loud enough for Wendall to hear.

“No,” she said, repeating Wendall’s word. She dropped her half smile, picked up the phone base, walked toward the dining room.

On the screen, Detective Langdon stood to one side as the locals followed Deputy Wilson and Gingerbread Fred through the crowd. Non-surfers filled in the gaps. Pamela Hodges tried to regain her composure. Lee Anne Ransom stepped into the shot and took several photos of the TV reporter. Pamela flicked her left hand at Lee Anne. A ‘go away’ gesture. Langdon turned and walked away. Lee Anne followed him.

Pamela Hodges let out a big breath, put on a smile. “And now, will this lovely weather continue? Back to Phillip Reed in the studio.” She waved. “Pamela Hodges reporting.”

Ruth DeFreines, without the phone, came back into the living room. She turned the television off, pulled the louvered doors from each end of the opening. She put a hand on her younger son’s head, turned it until his body followed, pushing him toward the hallway.

“Mom,” I asked, “what about… Portia?” My mother stopped. She didn’t turn around. “What did Wendall… Larry, what did he say about… her?”

Ruth DeFreines turned back toward me. She tightened the knot on her silk robe. “She is safe. We must be… patient.”

“Must be?”

“You are not going over there tomorrow, Atsushi. Larry says…”

“Friday?”

“Saturday is the soonest. Earliest. Only because you have to go to work. Mrs. Tony will know all about it by then.”

“I’m sure she will. Saturday.”

OH, Yeah- “Swamis” and all revisions are Copyright protected. All rights reserved by the author. Thanks for reading. Remember to check for other content on Sundays. Check forecast, check out realsurfer.net.

“Swamis” Chapter 8- Joey has a spell, buy’s Sid’s board, surfs afternoon Swamis, Joey’s mom talks with Portia…

Posted on by under "Swamis" the novel

                        CHAPTER EIGHT- MONDAY MARCH 24, 1969

 I was driving my mother’s 1964 Volvo four-door. Because I never told the DMV I had a history of seizures, I did get a license, I did drive. Because my mother believed I was getting better, she allowed me to drive. Still, she looked in my direction frequently. Because my father believed I was getting better, he taught me. If I did, indeed, have some kind of brain damage, I could force myself, will myself to control the freezes my father called ‘lapses,’ and the outbursts he called ‘mistakes.’

There are stories for each sport I was pushed to try, each team I did not become a part of. Each story involved my lack of attention at some point of time critical to practice or a game. More often, I was asked to leave because, while I had not been what my father called ‘fully committed,’ I had committed violent and unsportsmanlike attacks on an opponent. Or a teammate.

I was, initially, pushed toward surfing. My father’s answer to my fears was, “If you have a lapse, you will drown. So… don’t.” It was the same with driving. “Concentrate. You’re always thinking behind. You have to think ahead. Got that, Jody?”

We were heading down the grade and into La Jolla. “Favorite part of the trip, Mom; the ocean’s just spread out… so far.”

“Eyes on the road, please.” I glanced past her, quickly, hoping to see some sign of waves around the point. She gave me her fiercest look. I laughed, looked at the road, but looked down and out again on a curve. Scripps’s Pier. Waves. “Are they testing you again, this time?”

“I don’t think so. The new doctor. Peters. She’ll, I guess, analyze whatever they found out last time with the wires and the fancy equipment.” I looked over at my mother as we dropped down through the eucalyptus trees at the wide sweeping right-hand curve that mirrors the La Jolla Cove. “So, maybe we’ll find out; either I’m crazy or brain damaged.”

“Eyes on the road, please.”

…

I was in the examination room, standing under a round ceiling light installed a few inches off center. I had a history book and a notebook set on a long, thin, empty walnut table. Both were closed. The cabinets on two of the walls were cherry. A tile countertop featured double sink. Porcelain. This was a rented space, easily converted.

The six windows on the south wall extended from about a foot-and-a-half from the floor to eight inches from the ceiling. Four of the windows offered a view of tropical plants up against a mildewed redwood fence, eight foot high, no more than three feet away. The light that could make it through the space between the eves and the fence hit several, evenly spaced, colored glass and driftwood windchimes. The sound would be muted, nowhere near tinkly. 

The fourth wall had a door, hollow core, cheap Luan mahogany; with a thin frame, and several white lab coats hanging on it. There was an added-on closet, painted white, with another mahogany door, this one rough at the hinge side. Cut down and re-used. There four framed copies of diploma certificates from three universities. Two unmatched wingback chairs, each with an ottoman, were canted, purposefully, toward each other, facing the window wall.

Group practice. Shared space. I had seen two of the other doctors. One of them had done the tests; electrodes, wires, multiple requests to “just relax.” Results pending.    

The mahogany door opened. Dr. Peters entered, carrying a large stack of medical records folders. She kicked the door closed, dropped the stack on the table. She removed her white lab coat, hung it on the door, turned and pointed, with both hands, at the Gordon and Smith logo on the t shirt she was wearing.

“More of a San Diego… city thing, Dr. Peters.”

“Susan. I met Mike Hynson once,” she said. “He was in ‘Endless Summer.’ I figured you’d be either put at ease or impressed.”

“Once? Mike Hynson? Professionally?”

She shuffled through the stack, breaking it into thirds. Roughly. “Funny.”

“Is it?”

“No. It’s… funny you should come back with… that. If he was a… client, I couldn’t say so. I nodded. “So… I’m not saying.”

“No.”

 Dr. Peters shook her head. “I went to his shop. Really cool. It’s not like I surf or… I am petrified of the ocean.” She pulled out a folder from what had been the bottom third of the stack. “You?”

“Sure. There’s… fear, and there’s respect. A four-foot wave can kill you.” She may or may not have been listening.  “Is that my… permanent record?” Dr. Peters laughed as if the remark was clever or funny; it wasn’t either. I didn’t laugh. She looked at me, nodded, and let the laugh die out. We exchanged weak smiles.   

“Okay.” She pulled an adjustable stool, stainless steel, on rollers, from the corner on the far side of the closet. She motioned toward it. An invitation. I shook my head. “Or… we can both stand.”

“If it’s… okay with you, Ma’am. Dr. Peters.”

“Call me Susan. What do your… friends call you?”

“Trick question?”

“Maybe. Okay. Trick.” We both shrugged. Dr. Susan Peters waited for an answer.

“Surf friends. A couple.” Her reaction was more like curiosity rather than disbelief. “Friends call me Joey. So… Joey, Dr. Peters. I… I’m not… accustomed to calling my superiors or my elders by their first names. Respect.”

She leaned in toward me. “I’m fucking thirty… thirty-one. Joey. Okay?”

“Now I am… impressed and at ease. So… okay.” The Doctor squinted. “But, uh, Dr. Peters; you’re, I’m guessing, my doctor of record?” She nodded. “Seventh… by my count.”

Dr. Peters restacked the folders. “Court mandated. Your, um, your father set that up. How do you feel about that?”

“I was too close to turning eighteen. This was a… choice. An option. He and I… discussed it. How do you feel about… another smart ass trying to get off easy?”

“Me? Fine. Job. Most of the smartasses I deal with aren’t so… smart.” I nodded. “So, okay, Joey… your dad. He didn’t want to…” Dr. Peters backed away from the table. “No what he called ‘Psycho drugs.’” She sat down on the larger of the two wing chairs. She used one foot to pull the ottoman into position and put both feet up on it. She looked at the other chair, then at me. Another invitation. I remained standing.

“How long since you had an episode? Full?” I glanced at her folders. “Okay; three years ago, lunchtime, evidently out on the square at Fallbrook High School.  Embarrassing?” I shook my head. I must have smiled. “Okay. Different topic. When you… took this option… November of last year. You had another student pinned down, foot on his throat.”

“Grant Murdoch.”

“And he was… faking a seizure?”

“He wouldn’t have done it if… I never went to Friday night football… activities. My surf friends… persuaded me… to.”

“So, you took the… prank thing… personally?”

“Prank? Yes, I did.” I closed my eyes, envisioned the episode. Ten seconds, max. I sat on the metal stool, spun around several times. “He was… really good at it. Foaming at the mouth and everything. I was… Dr. Dan, the ‘electrode man.’ Do you have any… results?”

“Inconclusive.”

“You’re… disappointed?”

“No; but skipping over how you just now called another doctor, a grownup, by his first name… the tests. it was… bad timing.”

“Because I didn’t have, like, a seizure, or even… a… spell? So, by inconclusive, you mean normal.”

“Pretty much.”

“That is… disappointing. Maybe it’s like the doctor, two doctors back, said.” I pointed to the files again. “He insisted I was just faking it.”

“Are you?”

“Inconclusive.”

“You didn’t have a… you know about the most common seizure, right?”

“Petit’ mal. Absence. Thousand-yard stare. Yes.”

“Of course. You study… everything.”

“No. Things I’m interested in.”

Dr. Peters looked toward the stack of files. She took a breath, looked at the plants outside the windows, at the chime swaying slightly and silently, then back at me. “You went back into… regular, public school, in the third grade. Tell me about that.”

“One of the… teachers… decided maybe I might not be a… retard; maybe I’m… a genius.” I waited for her reaction. Her expression was hard to read. Blank. I danced the stool around until I faced the windows and the plants and the mildewed fence. “I’m not.”

“That’s why you turned down the scholarship?”

I made the half spin back toward the Doctor, waited for her to explain how she knew that. “School records came with a note.” She had to add more. “Vice Principal Greenwald.”

“Sure.” I spun around one more time before I stood up. “I turned it down because I am a faker, a phony. I… memorize.” I gave the seat of the stool a spin. Clockwise. It moved up about three inches. “I wouldn’t be able to compete with assholes with real brains. Susan.”

Dr. Peters leaned forward, then threw herself back in the chair. “Okay. We’ll… forget about the competition aspect… for now. This… memorization. Yes. In medical school, I had to… so much is repetition. Rote, little mnemonics, other… tricks.”

“Tricks.” I swept one hand back toward the table. “Files. Pictures. Little… movies.  I… wouldn’t it be great if we could…?” I walked closer. Dr. Peters pulled her feet from the ottoman. She leaned toward me. I continued. “There are the things we miss. They go by… too quickly. If we could go back, just a few seconds, get kind of a repeat what just happened. See what we missed.”

“And you can?”

“Can’t you? Don’t you… you take notes, you… Do you… rerun conversations in your mind, try to see where you were… awkward; where you… didn’t get the joke?”

“I try not to. I’m more of a… casual observer.”

“That’s me, Dr Peters; Casual.”

“Observant.” Dr. Peters stood up. The ottoman was between us, but she was close. Too close. She was about my height. Her eyes were what people call hazel. More to the gray/green color used in camouflage. “Tell me…” she said, quite possibly making some decision on the color of my eyes, “I’m trying to determine if there’s a trigger, a mechanism. Tell me what you remember about… the accident?”

“The… accident?”

“When you were five.”

“I don’t… remember that one. I was… five.”

“No, Joey, I believe you do.”

…

This wasn’t a brief remembrance of past events, this was a spell I couldn’t avoid, couldn’t think or will myself out of, and couldn’t stop. I stepped back, turned away. I shook my head as if that would keep the vision from taking hold. I tried to concentrate on… plants, the ones outside the window. Ivy, ferns, the mildew, the grain of the wood… “Like Gauguin,” I told myself, “Like Rousseau,” I said, out loud. “There’s a lion in there… somewhere.”

“Can you tell me what you remember, what you… see?”

I could not. The Doctor stepped between me and the window. She started to say something but stopped. She looked almost frightened. The image of the Doctor faded until it was gone. I was gone.

Everything I could remember, what I could see, was from my point of view.

I pulled down my father’s uniform jacket that been covering my face. I was in my father’s patrol car. Front seat. He took his right hand off the steering wheel and put it on my left shoulder.

“Our secret, huh Jody boy? Couldn’t put you in the back like a prisoner.” I didn’t answer. “Too many of you Korean War babies. I can’t believe… if they’re gonna have half-day kindergarten, they should have… busses both ways.” No answer. “Best argument for your mother getting her license.” No answer.

The light coming through the windshield and the windows was overwhelmingly bright. There was nothing but the light outside.

My father yelled something, two syllables. “Hold on!” His hand came across my face and dropped, out of my sight, to my chest.

His arm wasn’t enough to keep me from lurching forward. Blackness. I bounced back, then forward again, and down. Everything was up, streams of light from all four sides, a dark ceiling. My father was looking at me. His shadow, really, looking over and down. “You’re all right. You’re… fine.” He couldn’t reach me. The crushed door and steering wheel had him trapped. His right hand seemed to be hanging, his fingers twitching. He groaned as he forced his arm back toward his body. “We’re… fine.”

There were three taps on the window beyond my father. “Stay down,” he said. I could see my father’s eyes in the shadow. He looked, only for a second, at his gun belt, on the seat, coiled, the holster and the black handle of his pistol on top.

“You took… everything!” The voice was coming from the glare. “Everything!”

The man stepped back. The details of the man’s face were almost clear, then were lost again to the glare. Like a ghost.

“If we could just…” my father said as the suddenly recognizable shape of a rifle barrel moved toward us. Three more taps on the window. “If we could… relax.”

I could hear a siren. Closer. I tried to climb up, over, behind my father’s shadow.

“Everything!”

“No!”

There was a shot. My father screamed. Glass in front of and behind me shattered. The pieces that didn’t hit my father, seemingly in slow motion, blew at me. A wave. Diamonds. My father’s left hand was up, out. A bit of the light shone through the hole. I could hear the siren. I could see a red light, faint, throbbing, pulsing. The loudness of the siren and the rate of the light were increasing. I could see the man’s face, just beyond my father’s hand. His eyes were glistening with tears, but wide. Open. His left cheek was throbbing. I could see the rifle barrel again. It was black, shiny. It was moving. It stopped, pointed directly at me.  

My father twisted his bloody hand and grabbed for the barrel.

I could see the man’s face. Clearly. His eyes were on me. Bang. The second shot. The man looked surprised. He blinked. He fell back. Not quickly. He was a ghost in the glare, almost smiling before he disappeared.

Tires slid across gravel. The siren stopped. The engine noise was all that was remaining, that and something like groaning. 

“Gunny?” It was a different voice outside the car.

“I’m fine,” my father’s voice said.

“Bastard!” It was the new voice, followed by a third shot.

Dr. Susan Peters came back into focus. She looked quite pleased.

…

My mother was driving. I was looking past her, out at the horizon, down at the pier. I couldn’t help but catch her eye as we approached the top of the hill. “UCSD,” she said, “You could go there. Second semester, maybe, if it’s too late for fall.”

If I gave a verbal response at all, it was weak and meaningless agreement.

We were going down the hill at the north end of Torrey Pines when my mother said, “It’s the waiting rooms. I’ve spent too much of my life… waiting.” She reached over and patted my shoulder. This was unusual. We were both aware of this. “Next week, you can drive yourself.”

She swept her hand across the dashboard, as if touching my shoulder had been incidental. I nodded and smiled. If I wanted to reach over to touch her shoulder, I didn’t.

“Mom,” I said, somewhere near the one traffic light in Del Mar, “Would you prefer to have a son who is crazy, or one who is… damaged?”

“I have two sons,” she said, with a sound that was almost like someone clearing his or her voice, my mother’s version of a laugh. Controlled, as if she would be embarrassed to show real emotion. I laughed. Semi-controlled. “You are neither. Gifted, I would prefer to call you.” She cleared her voice. “Gifted.”

Out on the flat area north of Solana Beach, approaching Cardiff Reef, my mother said, “We could have met at Mrs. Tony’s. Then you could have surfed. Are the waves… good?”

“Pretty good. Not crowded.” The waves, at a medium tide, were really good. “She… Dr. Peters, did ask me about… when I was five?”

“Of course.” Almost to Swamis, waves visible even in the northbound lane, my mother added, “Your father does… did… take responsibility for your… problems. Blame is… different.”

“I should take responsibility for…”

“No.” She wasn’t looking at me. “We are sticking with the plan. You weren’t… there.”

“But…”

“I believe Larry is trying to… protect me.”

“Larry?”

She looked past me and out the window as we passed the Swamis parking lot. “There are very few cars. So, the waves aren’t… the way you like them?”  

Before I could visualize the variety of surf conditions I had faced, from flat to out of control; glassy to blown-out; fog-bound, gray-bound, to brilliantly blue, to glaring white, I said, “Actually, Mom, the waves are exactly the way I like them.”

…

I couldn’t find an image in a quick search that showed the building when it was the Surfboards Hawaii shop back in 1969. In real life, it was my favorite, not that I didn’t feel like a kook at it or any other shop. Probably the Surfboards by Heck shop in Carlsbad was one where I felt a little more at ease. When Trish and I lived in Encinitas ’74-77, we did frequent the La Paloma, usually with guests. We saw “Harold and Maude” several times. Only recently did Trish admit she hated the movie. She did like the lay out seating.

…

Mrs. Joseph DeFreines and I were in the lobby at the Surfboards Hawaii shop. There were a few dazzlingly shiny surfboards leaned against the walls; each, regardless of the color of the tint, with perfect rail overlap lines. There were three nine foot and longer boards, on sale. The new ones were in the seven-to-eight-foot range, still long board thick. There were v-bottoms, the big thing from the previous year, and several twin fins. I had to touch the red twin fin. Six-eight. Concave under the rounded nose, downrail to fifty-fifty to downrail at the tail. Slight V-bottom.

My reaction to the board may have seemed like lust to my mother.  She looked around the rest of the lobby. There was a display case with an already thumbed-through copy of the latest “Surfer” bi-monthly on the counter. There were stickers inside, including the newest one for Surfboards Hawaii; with an outline of, I guessed, the island of Oahu. There were bars of wax designed just for surfing, spray cans of Slipcheck, a few colorful fiberglass fins, removeable.

There were posters and photos on the back wall. Hawaii, mostly; a couple of framed shots of locals at local breaks. One was of Sid, hanging ten. There was a photo of Jumper Hayes doing a stylish drop-knee cutback. 1966 or so. Another photo, black and white, was of Julia Cole, arm back, leaning back, in position on a back-lit, almost transparent wave. Perfect.

My mother was looking around the shop. I had it memorized. The young woman working the front was new; attractive, of course. Surfer’s girlfriend was my guess, though her slightly softer version of the hairspray-stiffened sixties bouffant may have been to make her appear more professional. Maybe.

In past visits, some with Gary and Roger, others with embarrassingly kooky friends of theirs, the lobby area was staffed by teenagers, locals, automatically cool, and presumably, because they worked in a surf shop, good surfers. Usually there were friends of the duty sales guy hanging out. They always stopped talking when I or we came in. Judgment in a surf shop, or at any surf spot, is harsh and instantaneous. Someone else’s word, a reputation, are not enough. Proof of proficiency is required.

Despite the young saleswoman’s hip outfit, this wasn’t a boutique surf shop. Surfboards were being shaped and glassed in the larger, back part of the building.

When my mother was looking for a parking spot, three guys were sitting out on the south side of the building, white foam dust all over them, squatting or sitting, leaning against the wall in the afternoon sun. A kid, younger than me, was nearest the open side door, drinking a coke. Rodrigo. Little Rod. Half Hawaiian, half Portuguese. We had discussed our heritage in the water at Grandview. Music and foam dust were coming out of the darkness of the doorway. Enviable work, I thought. I wouldn’t have even nodded if Rodrigo, or any of the three, had looked up. That would have forced someone to acknowledge my existence or shine me on, to admit or deny ever having spoken to me.

This sounds overdramatic now. Then, it was critical.

The shopkeeper didn’t have charm to waste on kooks and hodads and teenage cowboys who come in with their mothers. Dismissive. She was sitting on a stool in the corner farthest from the front door. She had looked up from her reading when we entered, mumbling some version of, “just look around.”

It was the North County Free Press in her hands. She put it down when my mother and I approached the display case. I had waited for any sign that the young woman recognized my mother or me. She tried to hide that she had. I pointed to the closed door behind her. “Used boards,” she said, “and consignments. Go on in.”

The young woman noticed me looking at the photos on the back wall as I stopped at the door. “Sid,” I said.

“Sid. Yeah. Team rider.” She reluctantly got up, walked over, and opened the door. Doesn’t much care where he surfs.”

“He… yeah, Sid has that reputation.” I turned away, half hoping she might wonder what else the cop’s kid might know.

My mother slipped the keys to the Volvo and some cash into my hand as we followed the young woman into the back room. It was stuffed with boards; all sizes, most with dirty wax still clinging to them. The young woman walked over to the long boards; three stacks; four in one, five in the other. She looked up, spread her arms between the stacks. I tried to give the money back to my mother. She closed her hands into fists.

The young woman looked a bit disappointed when she turned around and I had pulled a quite thrashed six-eight single fin out and was leaning it against several other boards. “Sid’s?”

“Sid. And he’s called dibs on the red board you were looking at. Twin fin. Latest thing.”

“Maybe I should wait until Sid trashes that one.”

The saleswoman wasted a second determining whether I was joking. Patronizing smile.

“Do you sell trunks?” My mother looked at me to see if she had pulled a surf shop faux pax. By this point, it didn’t matter.

“We don’t,” the young woman said, with an expression my mother would later describe as ‘prissy face,’ “but… Hansen does.”

…

The surfboard fit in the back seat of the Volvo, the nose sticking out of the passenger side window. I looked at the young woman, standing outside the shop, as I loaded it. “Good,” she said, “I wasn’t… sure.” The phone rang inside the shop. She went back in.

I replayed the time at the counter: Money offered, change returned; complimentary bar of Surf Research wax and one of the rectangular Surfboards Hawaii decals. The young woman caught me looking at the photo of Julia Cole. “Julia Cole,” I said. “You must know her.”

“If I must, then, I… must. Sure. Julia. Surfs with, and kind of like… the guys.”

My mother was already in the car when I got in. “Miss Prissy doesn’t surf,” she said. “It would… damage… her hair.”

I laughed first. My mother couldn’t help herself. It wasn’t a big laugh, but it was real.

…

Wearing my new nylon Hang Tens, I paddled my new-to-me trashed and patched board all the way to the outside peak. Two surfers had caught waves on the last set. One surfer remained. “Hey, that’s Sid’s board.” It was a kid, younger than me; blonde, freckled, sunburned, and obviously ditching school to get one over on pretty much everyone.

“Was. He, uh, broke it in for me.”

“Ha.” That was it for actual conversation. Uncrowded waves were available for a short period of time before school got out and work got over. Four surfers, three wave sets. We shared, pretty much; the older guy got the best waves. All too soon there were fifteen surfers in the lineup. No hoots, little eye contact, but I was in a rhythm, ride, paddle, short wait, ride. I had some decent rides, a couple of memorable ones; and I finished up with one from the outside peak to a calf-high but fast section on the very inside.

My mother had been left in the parking lot long enough for me to feel a bit guilty. I could make out her silhouette at the edge of the bluff as I stepped over the slippery rocks and onto the sand. A woman walked up to her; a woman who made my mom seem smaller than I knew her to be. Her long dress, her shawl, her dark hair, all were moving in rhythm with the updrafts. Portia.

The silhouettes were lost as I hurried to the stairs. When I reached the top, out of breath, my mother was waiting, holding one of the towels she kept in the Volvo “to protect the seats.” Portia was at the far end of the bluff section, talking to a young couple. Beyond them, the Jesus Saves bus was parked at its usual spot, squaring-off the far end of the lot.

“You spoke to her.”

My mother followed my eyes. “Patty? Yes, yes, I did. She’s very… she’s nice.”

“Portia.”

“She spoke to me. Yes. I meant… Portia. Yes. She’s… waiting.”

“Waiting. Oh, for Chulo. Yes.”

“Yes. Flowers. Portia told me there’s an A&W here… in Encinitas.” I looked at Portia and the couple. She was taking something from the young man. Money. Change dropped from a fist; several bills unfolded and placed into Portia’s palm. An offering, perhaps. Portia pulled her hand back, put the offering into a pocket on her skirt, gave the young girl a kiss, gave the young man a hug. “Freddy,” my mother said, “We can get something for Freddy.”

“What? Yeah. Food. Freddy. Yeah.” I took the towel, moved to the edge of the bluff, felt the moisture in the whisps of air coming up the bluff.

My mother came up beside me. She followed my eyes. We looked at the crowd spread between the inside and the outside lineup, the kelp a bit farther out, the water starting to shimmer if not sparkle. “I see why you like it here,” she said.

“Portia; did she try to evangelize… you?” My mother smiled and shook her head as if the very notion was ridiculous.

“I’ll drive.”

“Do you know how to get to the A&W?”

            “I know how to get to the Jack in the Box in Carlsbad. Gourmet fast food.” She shook her head. “And Mom…” She turned back toward the water; as did I. “You can pay for Freddy.”

            My mother walked toward the Volvo. She opened the driver’s door and waited until I was almost at the front of her car. She pointed at the white walls of the compound, following them from where they disappeared into the shrubbery to our left, to a series of angles and large gold flower sculptures on higher sections at the highway.

            “Tulips,” I said.

            “Lotus blossoms.”

            “Lotus. Yes.”

            “Yes. I took you there. Inside. You and Freddy. He was a baby. It was… before. You were four years old, so… you probably don’t remember.”

            I didn’t. I followed my mother’s eyes. Gingerbread Fred Thompson was riding his one speed bicycle from 101 and onto the grass alongside the wall on his one speed bicycle. He extended his left hand as if he was on the road, dropped over the slight curb and onto the parking lot. He cut straight across to the bluff.

             “Gingerbread Fred. He comes here… every evening,” I said. “Sundown. Ritual.” My mother tilted her head and squeezed her lips together in a gesture that usually meant something was a good thing. “That’s what religion is,” I added. “Mostly. If you do something religiously, faithfully, when you’re afraid not to do it, it’s more ritual than… belief.”

My mother looked back and forth between Gingerbread Fred and me several times, then just at me. I was aware. Still, I scanned the lot again before I refocused on her. “Everyone, Atsushi, all the religions… it is merely people trying to find some answers in some… much larger mystery.”

            “No, Mom, you’re… right.” I leaned over, tapping all my fingers on the roof of my mother’s car. “We… don’t… know.”

My mother held a single key, jangled the others a bit, smiled, moved into the driver’s seat. I looked at Gingerbread Fred for a moment. He was scanning the horizon. Ritual.

I DO HOPE everyone got some waves in the recent past. I DID. So, next time…

“SWAMIS,” copyright 2020, and all rights to any and all changes to the manuscript are claimed by the author, Erwin A. Dence, Jr. THANK YOU for honoring this.

“Swamis” Chapter 7- Joey, Portia, Chulo, Gingerbread Fred- Swamis Curtain Drop

Posted on by under "Swamis" the novel

                        CHAPTER SEVEN- WEDNESDAY, MARCH 19, 1969

Some people come to the bluff at Swamis just for the sunsets. Carpenters and insurance salesmen mixed in with the surfers, just out of the water, who had to have one more look. On this afternoon, I was one of those.  

“After school, after work surfers. Medium crowd. No hassles. Sunset watchers took over the bluff. One lady, business outfit, thanked LA smog for nice orange sunset.”

It was through this crowd of sunset watchers that Portia walked, right to left, from the Jesus Saves bus at the far west end of the parking lot, to the new brick bathroom and shower facility on the 101 side of the stairs. With something bulky under her left arm, she walked as a dancer, perhaps, would, right hand out, palm down, as if floating across the horizon.

Portia was wearing a blouse that went lower than her hips, set off with a cloth sash, wide, purple. Her skirt stopped just above her ankles. Her feet were bare and tan. Portia’s two main pieces of clothing were in dark and almost competitive prints, Gypsy/Peasant/Hippie look. Her hair was long, straight, dark brown, almost black, accentuated with a band around her head that almost matched the sash. No jewelry, just a smaller version of the cross Chulo wore, hers a conveniently shaped piece of driftwood, hanging from hemp twine.

What I couldn’t describe, at that time, was Portia’s face. Pretty from a distance, she seemed to defy a closer look. Inexplicable. Or perhaps it was that, if you were close enough, she was looking at you with an intimidating intensity you couldn’t match.

You might look at her mouth rather than her eyes.

In the very middle of the pack of sunset watchers, Portia stepped between the sun and a man straddling a bicycle undersized for him. Gingerbread Fred. Portia blocked his view of that moment just before the sun exploded and spread at the horizon. It took another moment before she hugged him. I could see her face over his right shoulder. Dark, shadowed. She looked at me for another moment. Blue. Her eyes were a blue that didn’t match anything else about her.

I saw her, there, and I saw an overlapping image of her from another time. Mid-day, I was taking a break from surfing, just around Swamis Point at an area called Boneyards. Lying on the largest, flattest of the big, soft edged rocks, I was close to being asleep. Portia’s shadow blocked the sun. “Do you know Jesus?”

I didn’t open my eyes. “Whose version?”

“Yours,” she said, without any hesitation. She dropped a pamphlet on my chest and moved back, allowing the sun to hit me full on, again. I blocked the sun with a hand and opened my eyes. The pamphlet was hand drawn, hand lettered, eight-and-a-half by eleven, folded, with some vague message about some vague but wonderful Jesus. I sat up. Portia backed away, turned into the glare, danced up to two young women in street clothes, handed them pamphlets, and danced into the shallows.

This Portia, on the bluff, held Gingerbread Fred’s hand as she stepped away. I would save this image: Hands stretched between them, nothing but light behind them.

I had heard stories about Gingerbread Fred. Almost myths. Tijuana Sloughs, breaks outside of Windansea; Fred was on a list of names of surfers from the pre-Gidget past. Legends: Simmons, Blake, Holder, Edwards, Richards; their stories further enhanced with each retelling.

This was the current version of the man. He was damaged, burned out, not fully there. Korea was the rumor. Or Vietnam. Or both. Yet he was here, the bluff at Swamis Point, as he was, seemingly, religiously, for the sunset.

Legends are one thing, parking is another. Someone pulled a car out of a space two spots over from the optimum location. I ran to the Falcon, parked on the far side of the center row. Not taking the time to retrieve my notebooks and binders from the hood, I unlocked it, got in, and eased, counterclockwise, around the other cars and past the Jesus Saves bus, narrowly beating someone else, coming in clockwise, for the spot. Exciting. A little victory.

I was aware that something had blown off the hood. I opened the door carefully, to avoid hitting the car to my left, and got out. A man was holding that week’s edition of the North County Free Press, eight pages, stapled in the middle, open and up to his face.

There was an ad for a farm cooperative on the back page, a photo of me on the front. Me, behind the plate glass window. “Local Detective Killed in Mysterious Car Accident.” The heading for the lead story, right side, balanced by the photo, was “Joseph J. DeFreines, Heroic by Nature.” The by-line was “Lee Anne Ransom.” I had chuckled when I read that the first time.  

I imagined what the man was looking at; the coverage and the photos from the funeral. In the featured photo, top right, page five, my mother was looking down, holding the folded American flag with Freddy, on one side, crying, me, on the other side, looking at my mother and not crying. Or he could have been looking at the photo of the crowd, San Diego County Sheriff O’Conner and a group of detectives and deputies, all in uniform, Detective Wendall holding the department’s show horse, a magnificent Palomino, the saddle empty. Wendall looked honestly broken. Or the man could have been reading the testimonials. Or he could have been reading the article on the bottom right, “Is Marijuana Now the County’s Top Cash Crop?” Also written by Lee Anne Ransom.   

The man lowered the paper, held it out, still open, with both hands. He was of East Indian descent, I guessed. I had seen him before, different setting, different clothes. He was, on this afternoon, wearing workman’s clothing, heavy blue-gray pants with worn and wet knees, lace up boots with the toe areas scuffed, a long sleeve shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He had a faded red bandana half hanging from his left front pocket. His hair and beard were black, both reaching just below his collar.

I looked at the man long enough to take in those details. He looked more at the paper than at me. “I can get another… copy,” he said. “They are, of course… free.”

“No. Keep this one. I have… another copy.” I shook my head. “Free. The free thing.”

“Then, thank you so much.” The man folded the paper, folded it again, tucked it under his arm, did a slight forward tip of his head. “I do some… gardening.” He moved his left hand behind him, pointing. “Outside the compound.” I returned the head tip. “Volunteer.” I did notice an accent. English accent with East Indian rhythm. Perhaps.

“Oh,” I said, looking along the white stucco wall of the Self Realization Fellowship compound, and suddenly remembering where I had seen him, “You’re a… member.”

He smiled, one of those half face smiles. Right side in this case. “Member?” He shook his head. “Loosely… connected.” English, for sure; but I couldn’t discern anything more about place or status. “I saw you once. Inside.” He nodded toward the compound, but out and up, toward the point. “The… meditation garden.”

I tried not to visualize. It didn’t work. I closed my eyes, opened them again. It was the double exposure thing, the vision. I could still see the volunteer gardener, along with another version. Same man, this one dressed in a robe. He was standing next to an older man, with even longer hair and beard, gray, and dressed in a robe made from a silkier, more colorful fabric. That man was possibly an actual Swami, or Yogi, possibly even the Swami. They were smiling. At me. Appreciative smiles. I didn’t want to explain. Anything. I jumped up from the bench and ran, down the manicured paths with hand-set stones, perfectly cared-for plants, flowers year-round.

I blinked. I opened my eyes. “I… ran.”

“You did. Yes, you do remember.”

“I was… studying. Not… anything else.”

“Perfectly fine. Meditation is… one’s own time.”

I followed the man’s eyes back to the bluff. Portia was returning from the bathrooms with a different bundle under her arms, with different clothing, a very different look. Braided strands from the front of her hair were wrapped around to hold the rest in place. There was, perhaps, a ribbon. She was wearing a loose top, long, with long sleeves, a subtly patterned or even one-color Pendleton, with bellbottom pants and sandals.

Portia was walking behind the sunset watchers. “Conservative,” I said, pretty much to myself, but expecting some comment from the volunteer gardener. No. He was gone. He was crossing the lawn by the white stucco compound wall; and was halfway to Highway 101 when the Hayes Flowers van entered the lot.

…

From FLICKR under “Sunsets at Swamis images.” Great photo. Love the glow.

I walked back to the bluff, slightly behind the row of people watching the burnt orange in the wispy cirrus clouds at the horizon fade, toward Portia. Watching the yellow van go down the far row, she took three quick steps and then stopped. I was watching Portia. The van stopped at the squared off end of the asphalt, engine idling, next to the Jesus Saves bus. 

I stopped, turned, walked back ten paces, squeezed past the door on the car to the left of the Falcon. I opened the front door to my car. I stood there too long, watching Portia. She was not moving closer to the bus and the van. Waiting. She glanced toward me. I am certain she smiled. Something about our shared hesitancy.

Because I had to say something, I said, “I got a good… spot.”

“Good,” she said. “Great sunset.”

“Yes.” I glanced toward it, then back toward Portia. Her face was shadowed, but this Portia, in regular clothes, seemed younger.

“Chulo… and I, we have to go to Balboa, the, uh, Naval hospital. His friend… you must know him. He surfs. Surfed. Juni. That’s what Chulo calls him.”

Portia walked closer. She set her bundle on the hood of the Falcon. I kept the door between us. “Jumper. Jumper Hayes. He’s… there? Balboa?” She nodded. “He all right?”

“He’s alive. He was transferred there… here, from Hawaii.”

Portia, keeping her eyes on me, moved closer. Sunset watchers beyond her were looking toward the Jesus Saves bus and the Hayes Flower van. Two men, raised voices, short bursts back and forth, not quite distinguishable words. I didn’t look around.

“I have never met him. Jumper.” Portia came up, even closer. Her eyes were, with her usual dark eye makeup gone, that surprising blue color. Her hair was not naturally black. It was, at the roots, lighter. “We’re going… with Mr. and Mrs. Hayes… their car. Good citizen car. It’ll get us through the front gate.”

“The Cadillac. Yeah. That’ll work.”

Portia had to say something or walk away. The muffled back and forth at the Jesus Saves bus continued. “Your father…” I kept my eyes on her. “Chulo and me…” She touched my left hand, slid her right hand on top of it, both of our hands resting on the top edge of the door. “He… introduced me and Chulo. ‘Troublemakers,’ he called us. Got me a job. Then I got on with Mrs. Hayes. Consuela. Arrangements, mostly. Shop work.”

Portia paused to make sure I was listening or that I understood. “The religious thing. That was Chulo. Converted and all. Work camp.” She had a ‘taste’s bad’ expression, just for a moment. “Jail. East County.” You probably knew about that.”

“In Fallbrook it was known as, ‘The Great Avocado Robbery.’”

Portia laughed. She was younger than I’d thought, barely over that line I’d set between me and adulthood. “They love their avocados,” she said.

“They do. Chulo and Jumper and some mysterious guy from… somewhere. A buyer. Supposedly. Never caught him. I got that from the papers. Never… my father didn’t tell… ‘war stories.’” I laughed. “Of course, he did; just… not to me.”

Portia moved her hand to the vertical edge of the door. “Your father…” I was trying to think of a word for the look she was giving me. Earnest. Sincere. “Chulo says he did his best. The Deputy… Bancroft… Well, sorry God, but… fuck him.”

It was my turn to speak. I didn’t. I was picturing Deputy Bancroft from the few times I had seen him at the Vista Substation. Once was before he had crippled Chulo, all smiles and backslapping his fellow deputies, once, looking worried and angry, when he was trying to get the other deputies to support him. Most of them did.

“Butchy Bancroft,” I said. “Yeah. He’s, uh, he’s changing tires. Escondido.”

Portia shrugged. She may have smiled.

The light had become grainy, the smog-enhanced colors at the horizon had gone gray. The few lights around the parking lot, just coming on, had to compete with the advance of night. The sunset show was over. Most of the watchers moved away from the bluff and, at various speeds, toward their vehicles. A few stayed on as if, perhaps, they were waiting for closing credits.

Not yet.

“Really?” It was loud. There was a softer, muffled response, followed immediately by, “Fuck you then, Chulo!” Loud and clear. Both Portia and I looked over. The Hayes Flowers van blocked the view of Chulo and the other man, but one occasional column of cigarette smoke raising up beyond the two popout surfboards revealed where the man doing the yelling was standing.

A skinny man wearing a cowboy hat went up the stairs of the Jesus Saves bus, closed the doors, started the engine, revving it quite unnecessarily.

“Asshole,” Portia said. She looked up and whispered, “Sorry. Again.”

The guy in the cowboy hat was honking the Jesus Save bus’s horn, flashing the headlights. The running lights and the inside lights in the driver’s area were flashing between the honks. The bus’s engine was racing. The Asshole rode the clutch, then popped it.

Chulo limped around the front of the van, and got in. “Different clothes,” I said. The engine was still running. He pulled the van forward and started down the bluff side lane. Counterclockwise. I stepped back, closed the front door, walked to the back of the Falcon to allow Portia room to get by. The van stopped, front doors even with me.

Chulo nodded. I nodded. “Get any… good ones?” he asked through the open passenger side window.

I could hear the Jesus Saves bus heading north on 101, grinding again between second and third gear.

“A couple,” I said, to Chulo, as Portia walked past me. She opened the van’s passenger door, set her bundle of clothes on the bench seat, held the door open, and looked at me as if she expected me to ask a question. “Different clothes,” I said, more to Portia than Chulo. “I mean,” I said, looking directly at Chulo, “this is not the, um, Jesus look.”

“People get that wrong,” Chulo said. “Jesus, way classier dresser. It’s more like, it’s a John the Baptist look.”

“Oh. Sure. Jesus. Whole cloth. Yeah.” I stepped away.

“You know the gospel.”

“Partially by choice.”

“Holy Spirit, man,” Chulo said, moving his fingers like a piano player. “Mysterious.” Portia closed the door. Chulo looked at her before he looked past her and at me. “I told them, Jody; Wendall, the State Patrolman, everyone… Plymouth. Gray Plymouth. Old guy, I said; probably didn’t even realize… what happened.”

“What about Langdon?”

“I can handle… Langdon. God… God love him.”

“He means ‘fuck Langdon,’” Portia said. “Asshole.”

“That’s how I… interpreted it.” Portia looked at me I looked away and then up. There was something about the popout surfboard on the right side of the van. It was blue, darker on the top, fading out on the rails. Different board. I took a step back to check out the skeg. “I mean… God love… him.”

“Assholes… everywhere.” Someone was beside me. Directly in front of the closed door. Gingerbread Fred. Threadbare sweater over a once white t shirt; maximum fade on his Levis, sewn-on patches of different fabric at the knees; no shoes; long and once-red hair, I assumed, grayed-out and as stringy as his beard; glasses patched and listing to the left; Gingerbread Fred was looking up. He was looking beyond the blue surfboard, beyond the palm fronds. I had to follow his eyes.

A gauze of cloud had caught the last of the day’s sunlight, impossibly mixing pink and blue in a colorless sky. Gingerbread Fred had been watching me, he had moved close to the passenger side door, and was looking between Chulo and Portia. At me.

“Boy gets it,” he said.

“Fred,” Portia said in the kindest sort of voice. “Fred’s here for the show.”

“As always.”

“Fred Thompson, the legend,” Chulo said. “Fred. Man, me and Portia; we have to get going. Juni… Jumper, he’s… they got… overrun. His platoon. He’s… wounded. He’s in Balboa.”

“Oh,” Fred Thompson said, “so Petey was right. That cocksucker DeFreines did get Jumper to fuckin’ join up. Semper Fi, motherfuckers.”

Neither Chulo nor Portia looked at me. Chulo looked at Portia. She shook her head. Chulo said, “It was supposed to be a secret, Fred.”

Fred Thompson’s expression said he wasn’t surprised. “At least Jumper had a… choice.”

“Mister Thompson. I heard… sorry; I heard you went back in.” I realized, even as I was saying the words, that I had said too much.

“Mistake. Crashed twice, shot down once.” Fred Thompson seemed to drift away for a moment. I had to look, had to see what that looked like. He came back with a snap. “Sometimes, like, the right wave can make the wipeout and the swim in… just part of the price. Worth it.” He looked at me. I nodded. He shook his head. “Sometimes… not.”

 “Bad knee or not, I still wouldn’t have chosen the Marines, Fred.”

Gingerbread Fred Thompson said, “I’m no Catholic, but…” He made the sign of the cross, then threw his right hand out, fingers spread. “I do like the gesture.”

“It is a… good one.” Chulo shook his head, only slightly, did a version of the sign of the cross between the steering wheel and his chest, and revved the engine. “He’s coming back.”

“Jesus?”

“Yeah, Fred,” Chulo said, laughing. “Him too.”

Portia kissed the palm sides of the fingers on her right hand before folding them into a fist. She tapped her fist on the middle of her chest, three times, opened her hand, placed it over her heart. After five or six seconds, she wrapped her fingers around Fred Thompson’s right hand for another five or six seconds.

…

As the van pulled away, Fred held out his right hand. He looked at it, refocusing on me, beyond it, as if, perhaps, he was supposed to know who I was; as if we had, perhaps, spoken before. “We come back. We just don’t come back the same.”

I copied Fred’s smile.  

“You one of their… followers?” He pointed roughly toward the highway. I shook my head. His hand staying in pretty much the same place, he turned the rest of his body toward the remains of the sunset. “So, you’re here for the… finale?”

I wanted to ask Fred Thompson about Tijuana Sloughs, about Windansea and Simmons’s Reef and San Onofre before foam boards, about Malibu and surfing before ‘Gidget,’ about Korea and Vietnam, helicopters before they were gunships. I wanted to ask why he went back in the Army after Korea.

I didn’t. I followed him through the now-empty space next to the Falcon and to the bluff, his bicycle on the ground, too close to the edge. When Gingerbread Fred looked up, I looked up. “It’s darkness, for sure, but it’s not… night. We’re in the… shadow.”

Fred Thompson, facing the horizon, extended his left arm and hand forward, level, cocking his hand back at the wrist. He extended his right, creating an almost ninety-degree angle. “Perpendicular,” he said, holding that position for a second before throwing both arms back until they were straight out at his sides. “Parallel.”

He clasped his hands behind his back. I had to step back as he spun around, one, then another revolution. “You’ll get it,” he said, regaining his balance. “You know why?” I shook my head. “Because you… are… looking.” He turned to what was left of the sunset colors.

“Shadow,” I said.

“Ha! Yes. Shadow.” Gingerbread Fred came close enough to me that I could smell his breath. Milk, perhaps, soured. I tried not to react. “You probably heard. I’m… crazy.”

“There’s… a lot of that going around, Mister Thompson.”

“Yes!” He stooped down a bit, still too close to me. “You get it.” I nodded. “This one night, clear, like now. Now, I was raised on the Bible. Not a Catholic. Not a heathen, either.” He made the sign of the cross, laughed, and raised his right hand straight up. “An explosion. There was a… rainbow. So high up… the zenith… that high. The sun was still on it. ‘Every eye shall see him,’ the Book says. End of the world. People here, in this very parking lot… they were panicked.” He lowered his right arm, stretched out his fingers, brought his arm back until his hand was between us. He, then I looked at his palm. He lowered his hands just enough to look at me. “None of us are ready for that… that Jesus.”

“I saw it! Here! I was… here, Mr. Thompson! Swamis!”

“Whoa-aaaa-ooooo!” Fred Thompson’s voice dropped from rather high to gravelly. He closed his eyes and looked up. “Can you still… see it?”

“I can.”

I couldn’t see it. I could remember, perfectly, what I saw from the back of Gary’s real dad’s Chevy Ranchero in the Swamis parking lot. My back was against the back of the cab, three towels wrapped around me, ballast for three longboards, stacked, longer to shorter, and extended out the back. Gary, Roger, and Roger’s second girlfriend were in the front, the girlfriend in the middle. I was the only one to see the bright glow, expanding, somewhere between the clear sky and space, the zenith; high enough the sun was still on it. Rainbows.

I had thought about Jesus, returning in glory, as advertised. I was sixteen. I wasn’t ready.

When I was dropped off, I peered into the cab of the Ranchero and pointed to the spot in the high sky. I described what I had seen. Roger and Gary and the girlfriend got out and looked up. The glow was almost gone, a ghost of what it had been. I got a ‘sure,’ an ‘okay,’ and a ‘sorry I missed it.” The girlfriend. She was nice. She didn’t believe me, either.

I opened my eyes. Gingerbread Fred Thompson was six feet away. “I’m sure you know this,” I said. “Vandenburg Air Base. Rocket. Explosion.”

“Sure.” He turned toward the stairs. “I have chosen to believe it was a… a glimpse at what is… beyond, that it was a tear… in the shroud.”

“I’m… fine with that. But… we… you and I, we saw it.”

“We did.” Gingerbread Fred twisted the frames of his glasses, put a finger in his left ear, and yawned. He pulled at his sweater. He clawed at his hair. “I do hope you will excuse me. I am going to… quick dip. Therapeutic.” As he was dropping down the stairs and out of sight, I looked back up at the highest part of the sky. Zenith. Shadow. Stars, planets. Closing, and later, opening credits for the next show. “A tear in the shroud,” I said, out loud.

I repeat the phrase often.       

THERE ARE NO UPDATES ON SURF ON THE STRAIT. Maybe, like, October.

REMEMBER to check out realsurfers.net on Sunday. Maybe there will be an update; or some hope for waves. MEANWHILE, there are always waves somewhere, just not, like, near here.

“If You Do Happen To See Jacob…

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…tell him he is loved.”

The waves, even on the northwest coast, continue to be weak. At best. Still, people seeking some kind of float are journeying out, past the usual summer road work delays, and behind the usual hordes of leather-bound motorcyclists and the EVers making ‘the loop’ on Surf Route 101, the RVs and the folks with boats and already-blown-up blow-up SUPs, the campers and trailers.

Yeah, it’s summer. I haven’t ventured west yet, but my so-far stealth surf rig is up and running, and I am so, so tempted.

Here’s a story: I should add, non-fiction.

                        If you do happen to see Jacob…

…tell him he is loved.

I came around from the lake side of the house. I was standing at the open back doors of my van, considering whether I should break out another drop cloth. A car on the road that does a half circle on the south side of the lake stopped. It didn’t pull over.

The window on the front passenger side of the car came down. The woman behind the wheel said something. I was too far away to hear. I came up the slight bank and stopped at the edge of the road. “Have you seen a kid come by here?”

There was a blond-haired kid, probably nine or ten, in the back seat, hard to see through the tinted windows, straining on his restraints.

“I was… on the other side.”

The woman was smoking, not inhaling deeply, blowing the whisps out the open window on her side. “He… we had a… disagreement. A thing. He’s fifteen. I’m the stepmom.”

“I’ll keep an eye out. Does he… look like… this kid?”

“No. He’s… he looks native. Big for his age.”

“Not bigger than me?”

“No.”

“What’s his name?”

“Jacob.”

“Oh, like… I need something… I have a hard time remembering names… like Jacob’s ladder.”

“Guess so. Yeah.”

The woman could have driven on. She might have if another car had come up behind her. Though it’s summer, hot and sunny, a major closure on highway 101 has made traffic detour. I took two back roads to get to the lake house, located close to the public fishing dock, across the street from a farm, and adjacent to a small public campground.

The woman started talking about herself. She was a local, she said. She gave her family name.

I knew the name. I had dealings with a man by that name. “Oh. He’s my father.”

Her father had been a contractor. Roofer, mostly. Kind of thuggish. Our dealings had not all been pleasant.

He bad-rapped me, years ago, to a mutual client. I have a tough time forgiving this; mostly I just move on. I don’t forget.

I knew a few things about an uncle who inherited some money, bought a lot of new tools, vehicles, and equipment, and went into business with a couple of other guys. One partner had some health issues and moved to Hawaii. The other had a severe drug issue that was more important to him than completing jobs. The woman’s uncle died before, or just after the money ran out.

“Sad,” I said. “He was a nice guy.” Another uncle was described and written off as “Just… so fat.”

My mind went to someone I had just run into who was dangerously overweight.”

Her father, she said, lighting another cigarette, and her mother, sold the company, got divorced, “He met some woman on the beach. He’s got a seven-year-old. He’s doing the right thing, though, raising him on his own.”

“So… the woman from the beach? Gone?”

“Yeah.”

An SUV with a Costco kayak on top pulled up behind the woman’s car. After a moment, it went around.

“Hey, uh, if I see him… Jacob, I’ll tell him to get his ass over and… I’ll tell him you’re looking for him.”

“Thanks.”

Image ‘borrowed’ from Google. Thanks.

The woman never did ask my name. She wouldn’t know that, thirty years earlier, I had come to this very lake, a first responder with the local fire district, in response to a call for a teenager drowning. Drowning. I know how to swim. I live three miles away. I could beat the ambulance. I could do something. I could…

I couldn’t. The teenage boy wasn’t in the water, floundering. He had been underwater for too many minutes. He was on the beach, dragged by someone. On his back. He was already gone. Obviously. Visibly. He had thrown up. His airway was compromised. There would be no rescue, no heroes.

Still, I would be doing compressions all the way to the hospital, a nurse picked up at Four Corners. Desperate. Futile.

The boy’s mother showed up just after he was pronounced dead. I was headed out the Emergency Room doors, back to the aid car. I looked as the mother’s mouth opened, as her hands went to her face, possibly to block a scream. I looked away.

“If you do happen to see Jacob, please tell him he is loved.”  

If I had seen him, I would have. I didn’t. I had work to do before the sun hit the lake side of the house.

HOPE YOU’RE GETTING SOME WAVES!

REMEMBER to check out the latest installment of “SWAMIS” on Wednesday. This week, Joey goes to the psychologist, has a spell, gets a new board. Or maybe that’s next week. Still, the story continues.

NOTE: Copyright protection claimed on all original work on realsurfers.net. All rights reserved by the author, Erwin A. Dence, Jr. Thanks.

“SWAMIS” Chapter 6, Dangerous Doug, Devil Dogs, Head Jerk at the Beacons Switchback

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CHAPTER SIX- FRIDAY, MARCH 14, 1969

Fallbrook Union High School was letting out. Gary and Roger and I were standing in the big dirt parking lot behind the band room. Johnny Dale, in his daddy’s restored 1957 Chevy Nomad station wagon, two girls in the front seat with him, slowed down, then popped the clutch and spun out directly in front of us. Gary, then Roger, then I flipped the asshole off. I used both hands. “Double eagles,” I said.

The next two cars that passed us got three sets of double eagles.

“Friday, March 14,” I said, writing the date into a page about a third of the way through a red notebook sitting on the hood of a yellow 1968 Super Beetle with two surfboards, side by side on the Aloha racks; my bruised and patched nine-six pintail and a brand-new Hansen ten-two. “Finally enough light after school to go to, at least Oceanside. Gary and Roger bailed.”

“We’re not bailing, Joey; we have dates.” Roger mouthed, “Dates” while running his hand along the rail of the board on the rack on the driver’s side.

“With girls,” Gary added. “Friday night! And besides, where is Doublewide Doug?”

“Doug-L-ass has… art seventh period,” Roger said. I nodded, looked at my watch, wrote something in the notebook.

“Why is it,” Gary asked, running his hand down the rail of the Hansen, “that Dingleberry Doug has a new fucking car and a new fucking surfboard?”

“Why is it, Gary, that Joey is such a whore that he’ll ride with Dipshit Doug?”

“Why is it, Joey, that everyone’s getting shorter boards, but your buddy, Ditchdigger Doug, is going aircraft carrier?”

I looked around the lot. “Because, gentlemen, Doug’s… working, one, and his father’s running irrigation for all the… new ranchettes, two, and three, I’m a whore for the surf, and three, again… gas money.” I stepped back from my friends. Both were wearing Levis, Ked’s boat shoes, J.C. Penny’s white t shirts, and nylon windbreakers. As was I. “Why is it that we all don’t have… matching windbreakers like we’re on the Dork Neck Surf Team?” Both gave me ‘fuck you’ looks. “You guys, with the blonde hair and… people who don’t know better might just believe you surf better than I do.”

“Fine with me, Joey. Gary? You?”

“Yeah. Fine, but… Hey, Joey; here comes your date now!”

Doug, varsity offensive lineman, was on the sidewalk, still a distance away, slow running toward us. He had a couple of notebooks under his right arm, his left arm out and ready to straight arm anyone in his path.

“Joey DeFreines, surf slut.” Gary blew a kiss toward Doug with a big arm movement. Roger put both hands out as if expecting a pass. Doug didn’t see it.  Gary’s mom’s Corvair pulled in between us, trailed by its usual puffs of black smoke. Gary’s sister, the Princess, was driving. There was another girl in the front seat, two more in the back. Sophomore girls. Giggling. The Princess peeled out just as Gary went around the back of the car.

“Better remember to put some oil in it, Princess.”

 The Princess honked as she cut another car off, pulled out and onto the side road in a cloud of black smoke.

Doug touched his car, leaned against it, breathing heavily. “Made it!” Neither Gary nor Roger acknowledged Doug. He laid a piece of drawing paper onto the hood. “Check this shit out!” It was a drawing, pastels, of cartoonish people and cars on the side a road. A red light was glowing from beyond and below the cars and people. “Pulled over” was written in the same red as a sort of caption.  

“Where’d you get that?”

“Well, Roger, someone in my art class wanted me to scotch tape it on…” He pointed toward me. “Jody’s locker.”

“Grant Murdoch.”

“Grant fucking Murdoch.”

“Bingo! It’s from one of the pictures of Jody in the Free Press.”  

“Hey, um, Doug-l-as,” Roger said, extending the ‘ass’ part, “Don’t wear that fucking letterman jacket to the beach. Joey wants all the hodads to think he’s from somewhere else.”

“Laguna… specifically,” I said as I rolled up the drawing, using the scotch tape at the corners to secure the roll. “Or San Clemente. Santa Cruz. Just… not… Fallbrook.”

Douglas yanked on the Warrior’s jacket, tossed it, inside-out, onto the hood of his car.

“Oh, and fuck Grant Murdoch,” Gary said as he and Roger turned and headed toward Roger’s stepfather’s Mustang.

…

Doug was driving. I had a book open, paper bag cover with unreadably psychedelic pencil lettering. “Civics” and “Grandview” and “Joey DeFreines.”

“Shit, Jody, I could just cheat off of you.”

“Or… you could… I’ll just give you the… shit I think’ll be on the test.”

“Close your eyes, Jody.” Doug pushed the book back toward my face.

I knew exactly where we were. Three corners west of the little village of Bonsall, the last straightaway before the sharp left and the narrow bridge across the wide valley that held the thin line of the San Luis Rey River. I looked over the book and Doug just in time to see the construction site for a strip mall.

“Building it quick, Jody.”

“Yes. Quick. Doug.

“Um, uh, Jody; you know, my sister… she taught me how to drive. She said, if there’s a truck or something coming… on the bridge… she just closes her eyes.”

“Uh, Doug… no; that’d be… dangerous… Doug. Eyes open. Please.”

We made it across. No vehicles coming our way. A choice had to be made. It was a soft right hand turn and a straightaway or a steep hill. “Which way? Vista or Oceanside?”

“Oceanside’s faster… I think.”

“Faster then, Doug.”

Doug downshifted, made the soft right-hand turn. We were thirty seconds or so along when Doug said, “Um, you know; Gary and Roger call you Joey.” I didn’t look over the Civics book. “Instead of Jody.” I did look over the Civics book. “I’ll call you that if you call me…”

“In the name of world peace,” I said, lowering the book, “I will, in the future, always refer to you as… Dangerous Doug. Okay?”

“And you can tell Gary and Roger that I’m, you know, really good, surfing-wise. Joey.”

I lifted the book back up to my face. “Or… I can give you a dollar for gas… Doug-ie.”

“Oh. No. That’s all right… Jo-ey.”

…

Doug cut off an oncoming pickup truck as he made the thirty-five-degree turn onto the El Camino Real cutoff, southwest, out of the valley. So, no Oceanside. We hit the highway on the other side, merged onto I-5, got off at Tamarack Avenue. High tide. Shorebreak. We didn’t even drop into the lower parking lot. Doug missed the turn for Grandview. So, Beacons. Doug pulled in next to a green-gray VW bus with a white roof.

“Last chance, Doug. Sun’s down in… forty minutes.”

 The tide was fairly high but dropping. There were five surfers out, two of them girls. There were four guys in street clothes on the beach. Two were watching, one was standing, one was doing some sort of surf pantomime, a beer bottle in each hand.

“Jerks,” I said.

Doug opened the trunk on the front of his super beetle. I moved to the bluff, wrapping Doug’s extra towel around me. I turned my shortjohn wetsuit back to outside out, peeled off my Levis and boxers, pulled the wetsuit up partway, wrapped the clothes in the towel, pulled the sleeveless suit up the rest of the way. One arm through, I connected the opposite shoulder with a stainless-steel turnbuckle. Custom, from a sailmaker at Oceanside Harbor. The first one, December of 1965, cost fifteen dollars. Christmas present. This one was seventeen-fifty, plus tax. But they were custom, two weeks from measuring to pick up.

Doug unstrapped the boards. I pulled out a cigarette, showed the pack to Doug. He shook his head. I lit the Marlboro with three paper matches. Throwing my clothes into the trunk, I stashed my wallet, cigarettes, and matches in one shoe, stuffed the other shoe inside that one, slid the shoes under my clothes.

“Yes, Jo… Joey; I will lock the car.”

Halfway down the first section of the path, I saw that the two young women surfers, Julia Cole and her friend, were out of the water. The four Jerks had moved halfway across the sand. The pantomiming Jerk, apparently the leader, the Head Jerk, was saying something to his friends I couldn’t quite hear. They all laughed. Loudly.

“Monica,” Head Jerk said. Loudly. He repeated the word, stretching it to, “Mon-ee-ca. We have some be-er, San-ta Mon-e’-ca.” 

            Monica, her head down, pushed past the Head Jerk, looked the other three Jerks off. The Head Jerk, walking backwards toward the bluff in front of Julia Cole, stopped at the bottom of the trail. Julia Cole stopped; her face very close to the Jerk’s. Monica, three steps up the trail, stopped and looked back. Head Jerk stepped aside.

“Juuu-li-a. Juuuu-lee-ya; you are so cold. Soooo coooold. Ju’-li-a cold.”

Doug and I, boards under our arms, made the turn at the trail’s upper switchback.

“What you think, boys; Monica’a ass, or Juuu-lie’s?” The Head Jerk increased the volume. If any of the boys responded, it was more like growling or laughing than with any discernible words. “Brrrrrrrr. Water’s got to be as cold as you, Juu-lie. And now, I’m wondering, if you’ve got anything on under that wetsuit. I saw… skin.” 

More laughter. One of the three other members of the Jerk Crew said, “Come on, dude; cool it.”

Head Jerk moved both beer bottles to his left hand and shot his right hand out. Pleased that the subordinate Jerk crew member flinched, Head Jerk said, “And don’t fuckin’ call me dude… dude.” He started up the trail. His cohorts hung back, possibly because they saw me, looking quite displeased, and the much bigger Doug, behind me, also displeased.

 Monica and I met at the lower switchback. I stopped. Doug stopped. I stood my board up, holding it with my left hand, and moved to the uphill side.  Doug did the same. Monica nodded, quickly, but looked down as she passed. Julia Cole had an expression as much determined as pissed-off. Defiant. Looking at me, she didn’t seem to adjust her expression one way or the other. I did notice the chrome turnbuckle on one side of her wetsuit was undone and her bare shoulder was exposed. Skin. She noticed I noticed. Another asshole. Another jerk. Her lower lip seemed to pull in, her upper lip seemed to curl. Disappointment. Or anger. Julia blinked. I didn’t. I couldn’t.

Julia Cole passed me and then Doug. “Joey’ll get ‘em,” Doug said. No response.  

I may have been replaying Julia Cole’s expression for the third or fourth time when Head Jerk approached the tight angle at the switchback. I may have missed the first few words he kind of spit at me. I did catch, ‘fuckin’ retard.’ It was in the form of a question.

I replayed his words. “What’s the deal, asshole? Huh? You some sort of fuckin’ retard?”

“Possibly, Dude,” I said. “I do believe, Dude, you owe Julia Cole and Monica… don’t know her last name… a sincere apology.”

“You do,” Doug said. “Jerk.” Doug looked at me. I mouthed, “dude.” He said, “Dude.”

Dude looked past me and at Dangerous Doug in his new O’Neill wetsuit, his custom Hansen leaning against his left shoulder, his spotless white towel over his right shoulder.

“Okay.” Dude looked back down the trail. His cohorts hadn’t moved. “Come on. We have us a fuckin’ farm boy and some sort of retard Gook.”

“Oh, no. Jody; Dude there called you a Gook.”

“Common mistake.”

“Step aside, fuckers!” Neither Doug nor I moved.

“Jody,” Dude said, leaning in way too close to my face. “Girl’s name. Well. Fuck Monica! Fuck Julie fuckin’ Cole. And… fuck you, Jo-dee… And your fat-ass friend.”

“Oh. I’m sorry, Joey. The Jody thing. And… I don’t think Dude is gonna apologize.”

“I wish he would.” I extended my right arm out, my palm toward the Head Jerk. I allowed my board to fall against the bank.

Doug pushed the tail of his board into the decomposed sandstone, laid his board down, carefully, uphill, against the scrub and ice plant on the bluff. He wrapped his towel around his neck and pointed at each member of the Jerk Squad, now partway up the lower portion of the trail. “Devil Dog, assholes! Come on up and help out your friend here. Dude. But, warning, Joey’s a, for real, fucking, by-God, Devil Dog!”

Devil Dog didn’t register with Dude. He looked up the bluff for a moment. I would describe his expression as a sneer. Holding the two beer bottles by the necks, he smashed them against each other. The open one shattered, the remaining beer running down his arm. He held the raw edges up against the palm of my right hand. He was smiling. “Gook!”

I closed my eyes. I imagined an eleven-year-old kid, sneering at me. My opponent. He had padded fabric head gear and a heavy pad on his body, a padded pugil stick in his hands. He was sneering. Other voices were cheering. I could hear myself crying. Big sobs, inhaling between each one. My father’s voice said, “Eyes open, Jody! Open!” The kid in the head gear, still sneering, was about to hit me again, this time with the right-hand end of the stick. I could also see Head Jerk, his beer bottle weapon pulled back. My father’s voice screamed, “Get in there! Jody!” I did. I saw my pugil stick connect, saw the opponent fall back. His sneer gone.

 As was Dude’s.

Both beer bottles were on the path, both now broken. It would be a moment before Dude reached for his nose; before the blood started flowing from there and his upper lip. It would be another few moments before the other three Jerks turned and ran.

“Devil Dog,” Dangerous Doug said.

“Devil Pup,” I said, keeping my eyes on my opponent. “Marines, Dude… may I call you Dude?” There were tears in his eyes, blood seeping between his fingers. “Or… your name? No? Well, Devil pups, Dude; it’s kind of like… summer camp with hand-to-hand combat.”

Doug pulled his towel from his shoulders and handed it to Dude. “Apology, then?” The Head Jerk, Dude, fluffy towel to his face, nodded. “Not to us.” He nodded again. “Promise?” Third nod. “Okay.”

“And, if you would, pick up the glass. Dangerous. Huh, Doug?”

“Dangerous,” Doug said. “Keep the towel. Souvenir.”

When we got to the beach, Dude was still at the same spot, placing pieces of broken glass into Doug’s towel. The other three Jerks were partway up the bluff, climbing through the patches of ice plant.

“You going to cry, Joey?”

“I thought about it.” I looked up at the parking lot. There was a flash off a window on the VW bus. An open door. Julia Cole was behind the passenger side door. It was too far away. I couldn’t see her expression. I could remember hers from earlier.

“We surfing, or what, Jody?”

“I thought, Dangerous Doug… you said you’d call me Joey.”

“We surfing, or what… Joey?”

…

            I left my shoes on the porch, stacked my books on the side table in the foyer. My mother was on the couch, listening to some blues record.  Seventy-eight rpm. The photo of her husband was leaned up against the console. She may have been looking at it as the record ended and another one dropped onto the turn table. “South Pacific,” original Broadway cast.

            She got up, adjusted the record speed, and walked into the kitchen. I followed. “Doug. Who are his… people?” She turned off the oven and pulled out a foil covered plate, set it on the cast iron trivet on the kitchen table. “Would you like milk?”

            “I’ll get it. Doug’s father has the irrigation company. Football player. That Doug.”

            “Irrigation. Football. Doug. You and he… you are… friends, now?”

            “Now? Yeah. Surf friends. It’s kind of… different.”

“Still, it is nice that you have… friends.”

            “It’s just… it’s not me. Surfing’s cool. I surf.” My mother gave me a look I had to answer with, “Yes, mother; friends are… nice to have.” She nodded and walked through the formal dining room and into the living room.

            Freddy ran into the kitchen from the hallway, half pushed me against the counter. “She called,” he said. “The reporter. Asked for you… after I told her mom wasn’t here.”

            “Lee Ransom?”

            “Yeah. Her. Mom was here. Outside, grooming Tallulah.”

             “Okay.”

            “I told her…” Freddy switched to a whisper. “I told her what you told me to say.” I nodded, tried to push past my brother. He put a hand to my chest. “She asked what kind of car mom drives.” I did one of those ‘and?’ kind of shrugs. “She said she asked one of the detectives, and he pointed to a different car than the one someone else had pointed to… not the Volvo.”

            “Which one?”

            “Which car?”

            “Which detective?”

            “Boys!” I looked around Freddy. Our mother was in the dining room. I couldn’t tell from her expression how much she had heard. I had to assume too much.

MEANWHILE, in the real world, I’m cruising around (still cautiously) in my still super secret stealth surf rig, alternator purring properly, new gas filter and fuel additive added (thanks George Takamoto and Stephen R. Davis), waiting for the new hubcaps Trish ordered, and waiting for some waves, even on the coast, somewhere over knee high.

REMEMBER, new content on Sundays.

“Swamis” and revisions to the original work are protected by copyright, all rights reserved by the author.

Comment on Comment and Update on Updates

Posted on by under "Swamis" the novel

I received this comment on my latest post, more from the serializing of my novel, “Swamis.”

Going through your posts is like Deja Vu. Graduated Vista High 67. Moved to Leucadia 69 on Phoebe street. Surfed Beacons daily. Surfed off and on until my early 60s. Dad we a Sheriff/Detective in Vista. Took me for first surf at Oceanside harbor and a baseball career went poof. Our group surfed Carlsbad north and south. Jeez, the stories. Love your Art and writing. Randy

My first response: Whaaat?

The narrator of “Swamis,” Joey, is the son of a detective stationed in Vista. So… What? Wow! Here is my somewhat calmer written response:

Randy, 

Thanks for the comment. Very excited by your father having been a deputy/detective with the San Diego County Sheriff’s Office AND (even more so) by your not saying I was way off in anything I’ve posted from “Swamis” so far. I want the story to seem authentic. My wife, Trish, worked as a records clerk for the Sheriff’s Office downtown, at the jail, starting out on graveyard shift in the mid-70s. When I began writing the novel, I thought the most obvious folks to put suspicion on for the (upcoming) deaths were detectives. Because she worked around some of the detectives there at the time (may have dealt with your dad at some point), Trish said, “No way,” and, perhaps, made me promise that none of the fictional detectives would be responsible in my (fictional) manuscript.  

I’m sort of keeping my promise, bringing in the detective from Orange County and others as suspects.

I did have some interaction with the Sheriff’s Office in real life; got busted with some dickhead Fallbrook surf friends for heading over to South Carlsbad State Park to look for girls. Curfew violation, we were busted mostly because 15-year-old Billy McLean shot off his mouth. Five of us in the back of a CHP cruiser and taken to Vista.  Also, because Trish wanted to move up, I took a couple of night classes in Police Science (mostly to protect my wife from other cops/students). From Police/Community Relations class I did discover some cops and cop wannabes had some issues.

My vision (fancy word for idea) of Joseph DeFreines is of someone dedicated to his job, old-school cop, who, like a lot of fathers from our dads’ generation, worked long hours to provide for his family. I included in earlier versions the stuff that once happened in Fallbrook on Halloween, kids gathered downtown and egging passing vehicles. I participated once, 1968; got busted with Bill Birt and his stash of rotten eggs by, if memory serves, a plainclothes cop and a deputy before we made it to Main Street. We got to break all the eggs and go our way, with a comment/warning by the detective that he knew both of our fathers. On my way to the school library, where I had told my parents I was going, two of my brothers jumped out and egged our family station wagon. I made them wash it the next day.

Hey, Randy, I was busy studying and surfing and having a girlfriend and working. Still, at probably one the most revolutionary times in surfing, I did know times were changing, rapidly, more like catching up with the North County. One of my brothers followed friends to Northern California for ‘farming,’ another eventually went to work for ICE. The other brother may have taken a few too many hits of something. Blissfully unaware, I worked and surfed and got married and had kids.

I will be posting more from “Swamis,” taking this opportunity to do a, hopefully, final polish on the manuscript.

It is very important to me that the characters and what they do seems real. If you read anything that just seems wrong, feel free to write. Or write anyway. Because I wasn’t planning on writing this extensively, and because, with an even more than usual lack of nearby surf, I am going to post this on my site. Again, thank you so much for the comment. 

Oh, Wait! My next posting, Wednesday, will feature an incident at your spot, Beacons. Fiction, of course. Erwin

SURF RIG UPDATE- I am hoping that, with my stealth surf rig sporting its first new alternator since it was new, 1994, and three faulty rebuilds back at O’Reilly’s, and four new tires (went in for two- got too good a deal on a full set) to replace the Michelins that stayed too long under the car under a tree (sidewall blowouts are not fun), and a new fuel filter, and a repurposed, industrial strength rack on top, maybe the timing might just, just work out. Waves. Yes. Please.

I would include a photo, but I’m going to wait until I get a few sessions in.

MEANWHILE, I’m working on a flyer to go with the board now on display at the PORT TOWNSEND PUBLIC LIBRARY. The ‘plankholders’ are, left to right, Keith Darrock, Joel Carbon, me, and Adam James.

It is a one-of-a-kind. Guaranteed. The current thought is to sell it, with half of the proceeds going to the nonprofit FRIENDS OF THE LIBRARY (and Libraries do need friends right now), and half going to the (also nonprofit) OLYMPIC MUSIC FESTIVAL (which, full disclosure, my daughter, Dru, works for).

I’m thinking $3,000.00. You are free to think whatever you want. Yes. But, if you want to make a sincere offer, contact the library. We’ll see. Raffle? Hmmm.

$3,500.00 is what I’m actually thinking.

“Swamis” Chapter 5, Part 2- Memorial for Joey’s Father, Spilled Casserole, Mr. Dewey, Lee Ransom

Posted on by under "Swamis" the novel, surf fiction

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.

Vivid Covid Dreams

Posted on by under "Swamis" the novel, real surfers, surf fiction, surfing blogs, Uncategorized, writings of Erwin Dence

Maybe this piece is self-explanatory. Anxiety has hit us like a, um, wave; enough so that I was just thinking, yesterday, trying, as always, not to panic (in this case I was about twenty-five feet up on a ladder stuck, improperly at a bit of a left-of-straight angle that allowed me to, hopefully, paint trim up on a roof- it worked), that maybe being manic-depressive is normal.

NORMAL. Moments of bliss are, yeah, moments; and, while most of life is just kind of a glide, maybe a bit of an uphill grind, there are moments where things would cause just about anyone to… to be rightfully depressed.

MOMENTS, only, hopefully. It’s not that I’ve been more depressed than anxious, but I have been waiting to use some of my manic-ness on some waves. SOON.

I did do a video reading of this piece, tried to send it to Keith Darrock, PT ripper and librarian. I’m scheduled to do a ZOOM thing in August, connected with my novel, “SWAMIS” and I thought this might be a sort of prelude. BUT, e-mailing videos, I’ve discovered, is actually kind of tricky.

I am considering UPGRADING MY WORDPRESS ACCOUNT. This would get rid of pesky ads (for which I receive no compensation), and might allow me to post occasional videos. WE’LL SEE.

                Not Out, Just Put Away

In these anxious times, I have heard and read that many are afraid to dream while others have wild, vivid, Corona fever dreams, even without the fever.  Last night’s dream was, then, one of those, and I am writing about it before it fades into the early morning drizzle.

Write, because that’s what I do; that’s how I cope.  Whatever trauma or drama is going on, I can and mostly do think of it as part of some bigger narrative.  If dreams are meant to make some sense out of chaos… writing is dreaming; and I write.

It is, quite obviously, some sort of party.  People in nice clothes; some women in dresses, some men in sports coats.  It is one of those large rooms with a high ceiling on one side and a loft on the other, view of the water through the two-story bank of windows, sliding doors open to a deck.  Weekend cabin, second home along the Canal.  I’ve painted many through the years.  There is a large countertop toward one end of the great room, food spread out.  Party food.  Trays- cheeses and crackers, various.  Casserole dishes- various.  Three bottles of wine with interesting labels- open, glasses adjacent.  Sparkling sodas and colas in a cooler to the side; plastic cups on a corner of the counter.  Real plates, real silverware.

So, not a potluck, but guests, as is proper, have brought side dishes, bottles of wine with interesting labels.

This dream is all taking place from my point of view (POV), my perspective.  Of course.  Dreams.  I’m on one side of the room, scraping the last of some sort of dip onto my last cracker.  Not guacamole.  It might be red, though Trish claims men don’t dream in color, and, though I’d prefer her to be wrong; she is almost surely correct.  Still, I’m saying red; and there’s enough dip left that I consider either getting more crackers or scooping it up with one side of a finger.

Manners.  Leave it.

Trish isn’t here.  No, it must be one of those events where I will almost surely do something, say something embarrassing; me with my loud voice and big gestures.  She has obviously sent our daughter, Dru, in her place.  For some reason, our friend George, who avoids potentially awkward social situations more often (and less apologetically) than Trish, is here, more leaning than sitting on the edge of an overstuffed chair.

I start to say something to Dru about how soon we can leave when two men approach me.

This is the setup part: “I hear you’re a writer,” one of them says.  He is quite a distinguished looking fellow, and the statement is made without the condescension my reaction to it might suggest.

“Who would have told you that?”

This is when Dru moves away and I’m faced with two faces, my POV moving between them.  There is some sort of writing competition they are both aware of, submission deadline this very evening, and maybe I should consider entering.  At the least, they would be interested in hearing about what I write.

Here is the analysis part: I’m writing a novel.  Yeah.  And?  And when I’d written enough to get to an actual ending, I edited it, completely, first line to ‘The End.’  Then, so excited, so sure it was the genius work of a genius; I sent it out to several people to read.

This is when someone crazy enough to consider him or herself a writer gets truly crazy.  Out of his or her control, the manuscript must face the world on its own.  Waiting.  Waiting. 

Waiting for someone else’s assessment.

You only get one chance at a first impression.  I had overshot, overthought, overdone; and, as I feared, as I probably knew, early feedback made it obvious that I need to seriously edit the work; ruthlessly cut out so many of the peripherals, clarify the changes in time and place, simplify… it became obvious my manuscript might not actually be the genius work of a genius writer.

So, okay; I’m working on it; two-thirds of the way to the end; again.  But, doctors, counselors, friends, readers; now that I have eighteen point headings for chapters, fourteen point subheadings; now that I have moved whole blocks of words to where they should be, chronologically; now that I have deleted thirteen thousand or so words out of one hundred and twenty-three thousand; the tension now, the anxiety, in addition to all the other anxieties of real life, is this: Publishing, selling, getting the novel sold, published, out there.

Out there.

I must have said something abrasive and offensive and off-putting; the distinguished gentlemen are now at the far end of the room, leaning on the wall near the stairway to the loft.  George asks a question of the woman who, evidently, owns the house.  “I invited you over many times,” she says.

“Okay,” I say, full room voice, “I have songs, and a few poems, and short stories, and a couple of screenplays, and… don’t know where the other one is… two almost complete novels; so, now what?”

They don’t seem to have heard me.   Dru walks between me and them.  She gives me a look I know to mean I didn’t handle this well, and, additionally, I have just provided another story to share with her mother.  Proof. 

Time break.  I’m looking at the food on the counter.  The casserole dishes have lids or are covered in saran wrap, contents of the two-thirds-full dishes visible.  “I never got a chance at the real food,” I say.

“They’re not out of food,” Dru says, “It’s just put away.”

The woman who spoke to George appears.  She peels back one corner on a dish.  Noodles and cheese, the cheese on the top seared perfectly, only a few holes dug into the glaze.  There also might be green beans.  I’d guess green.  The homeowner looks over at the distinguished gentlemen.  “Good thing I didn’t say anything,” she says, “my daughter’s a writer and…”

“Oh,” I ask, “What kind of thing does she write?”

Dream’s gone.  I spent time I could have used on my manuscript.  Still, I have to get ready; get to Costco before the best selection of meat is gone.

Stay safe, stay sane, avoid panicking when you can, stay tuned.