PART ONE
“Boos and Bongos”
The characters in this story are diverse, but the writer has not ascribed ethnicity, leaving that to the reader to decide. It is a tale about certain types, who are not so good, but not so bad.
Facing the ocean in mid-afternoon he had to shade his eyes with his hand. It was easier to not look out, but focus on the pier itself. There were the fishermen—mostly men, a few women—and the fish and chips restaurant, the burger counter, the take away pizza slices shop, and of course the ferris wheel, turning despite few riders. Not a lot of people out on a weekday. Most were the elderly fishing line droppers and teen or twenty somethings after classes, A few beach bums were begging spare change.
They were on the Santa Monia pier, where below them the breakers smashed hard
into the wooden pilings holding it up, swirled froth circles of mayhem around the posts, its relentless indifferent surge letting you know your current situation was none of its concern. Their immediate one was that their apartment rent in the downscale McArthur Park area of L.A. just west of downtown was raised beyond any possibility of paying. Kyle and Babe took the bus to Santa Monica to breathe and think, then go look for an apartment in Venice.
The ocean was literary, it spoke in cryptic metaphors In Rockaway Beach, Queens, from the boardwalk it was a hum always in your ears, a monotonous constant background drone that portended a possible invasion of insanity.
In Pattaya, Thailand, the waves came in splashing loudly on slabs of rock that bordered right at the street, angry slaps disapproving the unclass and decadence of the place.
In Phuket in 2005, the tsunami took the whole depraved section of Patong away. You’d think there might have been a monument built to the force that sent the waves, but Patong was rebuilt exactly as before, with bars and vendors and guest houses, and already looks many decades old and trashed. Some of the streets with new TSUNAMI ESCAPE ROUTE signs are dead ended by buildings put up after the signs.
They were looking for a place that might be cheap enough. In Venice he found the only structure he’d seen on the entire West Coast that resembled a New York apartment building. The ocean was less than a block away. When they knocked on the manager’s door, they were met by a man who said he was Calvin, and Kyle said, “We want an apartment.”
Calvin, instead of immediately showing a rental, struck up conversation with, “Welcome to Venice, where the debris meets the sea. There’s a theory people keep getting close to the ocean because they want to go back into it.”
“We might go for a swim. I think this is the only building west of the Mississippi that looks like its in the South Bronx.
Calvin said, “Shit!. You from the South Bronx?”
“West, but I hung around the south a little.”
Calvin proudly pointed a finger at his own chest. “Brook Avenue. Hey, I like that idea, South Bronx. This is now “The South Bronx Suites.”.
He’d always stayed close to the ocean. As a kid in Rockaway, he spent hours a day in it in summers. He caught waves as they were breaking and rode them in. He’d never heard of surfing or surfboards. There were ropes into the sea that separated the beach sections by numbers, and each section had a lifeguard station, and three orange barrels along the ropes where swimmers could stop and rest. The lifeguards didn’t let anyone past the third barrel. Right about the third, there was a ‘sand bar’, where you could stand again. Years later, when he was grown, that sand bar grounded a ship full of Chinese immigrants who waded ashore at 116th Street where all the Irish bars were. The ocean speaking something.
At the South Bronx Suites there was no pier close by, so at night no pilings to bash, and right there the Pacific lacked that encroaching schizo buzz of the Atlantic in Rockaway. But the ocean was restless. The waves came in, and went out with boring regularity. The sound would settle between rolllers that were spent, be quiet for a moment, then pick up with the next incursion. There was discontent, rebellion at the tedium of meeting the sand and just retreating Living beside it, he had to put aside his theories of oceanic communication, dismiss that as coincidence, but couldn’t completely ignore what was always there. On nights when distractions surpassed focus on the wide Pacific, he had his moments of peace and it was during one of those interludes, lying content and half drunk beside Babe, that the while building started to shake and true to a brick tenement in an earthquake, the mortar between the bricks broke, the bricks started separating, and parts of the structure’s walls commenced to fall.
It wasn’t a giant earthquake. Everybody got out, but the damage was sufficient that the city—Venice is in the City of Los Angeles—condemned the building.
They all got relocation subsidies, but in reality stayed. The had keys to the doors, added padlocks. They had the old leases, which by their legal logic, gave them the claim to continue living there, as opposed to anybody who just thought they could.
They had priority, but not to the courtyard. That had no gate, and Calvin began charging ‘guests’ for sleeping there. Some of the tenants complained he was taking advantage of the impoverished, but Calvin was quick to point out that they knew they had to pay, and they came up with it, so how was he being unfair?
That worked for Calvin until “The Locals” from the Ghost Town section showed up. Calvin wouldn’t answer his door. Robo, their leader, was called such because he was as dispassionate and efficient as a robot.. Even cops can get emotional. Not Robo. He was efficient and he was there in person because this was a worthwhile mission. He gathered all who answered their doors in the courtyard and gave the disposition. He wanted to see their tenant’s leases, and they’d be paying the same amount to the Locals The courtyard overnight guests would also pay to the Locals, not to Calvin. He had all those present show their leases, and would be back to see the others. Anybody who didn’t cooperate would be forcefully evicted. He expressed his magnanimity toward them with, “I could rent these places to anybody, you know.”
Kyle and Babe had actually looked for a relocation with ‘the relocation’ but their credit…They still had Kyle’s Army disability that had been paying the rent before, so even paying rent to the Locals, they had their relocation nest egg. But the Locals weren’t playing with pussies. Calvin wasn’t going to pay them rent .and he had friends in the building weren’t either. Never mind the ocean, Kyle woke up some nights during attempted evictions not sure if he was in Venice, the real South Bronx or Vietnam again.
All he wanted to do was keep living with Babe, watch her paint like Van Gogh except she was painting what she saw—she’d say “Maybe he was too”— and write his unrecognized and unpublished poetry. They’d smoke a joint if it came their way, but beer was their first love, and cheaper. A bottle of wino port would do too.
You’d expect Calvin to go out with special effects sounding like a fireworks display, but he died in his sleep one night at age 52. Sudden Cardiac Arrest, was what the building ‘doctor’, Doc— who was once a hospital attendant— ruled it, saying, “the old carburetor just done quit”, but oh, the conspiracy theories about that. Poisoned by the Locals. Or, his girlfriend Beverly suggested, by his ‘friends’ paid to do it. The ‘tenants’ were ready—-are you ready?— to go the po-lice, but the thought of investigation about what was really happening in an abandoned building and with the courtyard squatters, motivated the Locals—are you ready?—to give the residents one month’s free rent if no municipal shit got stirred up, which would just kill the party for everybody. And they swore they had nothing to do with Calvin’s demise.
They allowed Reynold to arrange a midnight wake in the courtyard, just as Calvin had expressed in a written will Beverly produced. Eulogies and bongos, incense and marijuana, or any smoke, but be cool, nobody’s living here, just having a funeral ritual, the body in a shroud of blankets in front of a bonfire, (electricity a memory—the apartments were all lantern and candle lit like in olden times)
Calvin had more friends dead than ever he had when he was alive. They praised his management skills, his concern for the residents, his generosity to the courtyard guests. Kyle was pretty fucked up when he took his turn.
“OK. Everything everybody’s said about him is true, but don’t forget he could be an asshole too.”
At first there were catcalls, and boos to the rhythm of bongos, but Reynold stepped up beside him and said, “The man has a point. Let’s not all be hypocrites.”
Then began the de-eulogy. “He was charging the homeless money to sleep here.”
Defenders said, “He was accommodating people no one else would.”
“What if they didn’t have it?”
“Never happened. They had to come up with it, so they did.”
The Locals, not wanting to be scapegoated for his untimely passing, and only doing themselves what Calvin had, were his staunchest defenders.
After the party, there was some thought of tossing him to the fish, Beverly objected, on the basis that he’d wash up, and because it was Calvin’s stated wish to be cremated so he “wouldn’t end up in L.A.s version of Hart Island in New York” where the city buried the unclaimed from hospitals and city streets in deep piles.
Somebody said, “It has to be done before dawn,” like they had religious laws, but the reason wasn’t from any scripture, just the necessity of not incinerating a human body to ash and bone in broad daylight, and not in the courtyard at any hour.
They toted him down to the beach in the blankets, reset the bonfire, and did it there.
He had specified he wanted his cremains in an urn that could hold water at the top, placed in the courtyard entrance, so people could—“kind of bless themselves as they come in.”
He was bestowed a slab of concrete off the beach that came from an unknown source long ago, and it had a groove at the top where Reynold poured some water. He had to keep replenishing it not because any fingers ever dipped in, but because the taller street dogs stood on hind legs, leaned against it with their front, and lapped it up. So Calvin was doing some good, if ever there’d be a memorial.
The whole earth shook again, long and hard this time, and the “South Bronx” completely collapsed. The residents pulled who they could of their own out, and ran east before the tsunami came in.
The waves reached as far as the gentrified bungalows along the canals, and those were condemned. So guess where the South Bronx relocated to? And on Kyle’s suggestion, called it Scarsdale?. They deeply appreciate the tranquility of the canal cottages— which aren’t on Locals turf so they’re not paying anybody—and love the ducks that survived, floating aesthetically in the water, and which are sometimes also a source of food Seeing the good fortune brought by Calvin, they retrieved his undamaged relic, shrouded in mud and snagged in the old building’s remaining foundation.. His concrete slab now prominently faces the canals. Reynold keeps the water on top full, and the residents have initiated a ritual of splashing their fingers into the font above him for good luck. Robo himself has been spotted there, not trying to collect rents— at least not yet—but dipping his hand into the water, his kids along with him, having them do the same as apparently some insurance for their futures.
Calvin may be gone, but for the few who knew him he is not forgotten. Kyle and Babe are collaborating with Beverly to compose quotes to attribute to him, and Reynold, in recognition by the others for his maintenance service, has been designated a curator. Little has changed otherwise. The scene is much as it was before, but Kyle knows it won’t stay that the way. The ocean seems angry, not at them in particular, even seems in their favor, but he knows its mighty voice has not finished speaking.
PART TWO
“All Washed Up”
The waves had come in three successions, only the first one reaching the canals. The coastline hadn’t shifted that much, and there were a few structures left between the canals and the previous shore. When the ocean settled the new breakers came in to only fifty yards or so farther from before.
There was no hasty rebuilding. Developers weren’t going to put up those once planned estates of condos if buyers were afraid of a repeat. If flaky So Cal had one thing everybody could count on, it was earthquakes.
At the condemned canal cottages where Kyle, Babe, Reynold, Beverly and crew had taken possession, the ocean was far enough away to be only a murmur.
Yet at any time, no matter how drunk or stoned, Kyle lay down to sleep, he’d see rough white caps on a forbidding coast, with people caught in those currents smashing into a barrier of grey rocks, their bodies coloring the rocks with tints of their flesh and blood, blended to stone like the carcass of a cat flattened into an interstate pavement after being run over by a thousand cars. He told Babe and Beverly about his visions, and Babe told him he was going crazy. She said HE was going crazy. Expert witness testimony? Beverly, who’d taken up with Reynold since Calvin’s demise, was a fortune teller and she said, “No, that’s a revelation.”
Beverly didn’t read Tarot cards. She told fortunes while playing poker, and it seemed that the news was good if she was winning and terrible if not. It paid to cheat against yourself.
So he sat in for a few hands of seven card stud.
As he lost his money by raising with a pair if threes against her two queens showing, she told him in a conversational way, not like she was doing a reading,
“You’re going to get a letter.”
That was an absurd preposition. He didn’t have an address. All mail sent to the former yuppie colony of bungalows was returned as undeliverable. They knew that from Mike the mailman who once did drop off letters addressed to RESIDENTS of each various cottage numbers. The mail turned out to be notices to vacate. They ignored those, but got to know Mike.
He didn’t have enough money to keep bribing Beverly for psychic transmissions about whether the news was good or bad, and dropped out.
Reynold said, “Calvin’s spirit told me you’ll be taking a trip.”
Beverly glared, and admonished, “Reynold!”
She didn’t have to say. You don’t GIVE that away.
So, what the hell, Kyle went and talked to Calvin’s standing sarcophagus too, Calvin an ash and cartilage mummy entombed inside a chunk of concrete that might once have been the latrine wall on a ship, wedged open enough to shove his cremains in, then visibly cemented over. The patched up concrete seal had a disturbingly improvised look, and there was pigeon shit in the water font on top, but Kyle asked,
“Is this letter good news or bad?”
Holy shit, he got a verbal answer. “You have to go to the post office to find out.”
Then the speaker materialized, hidden from line of sight by Calvin’s statue, Mike the mailman grunting and lugging his heavy mailbag on his shoulder, the weight partially compensated for by his protruding stomach, as he turned the corner from the street into the pathway to the cottages. That was ordinarily an unnecessary effort except to give a justification for his visit, as there was rarely any mail. He finished “You have a letter at General Delivery.”
Mike, once he got accepted by the tribe by his initial advice to use the eviction notices to write poetry on, or as toilet paper, or as both depending on your critical self evaluation, took his lunch break smoking pot with them. He as often provided as toked for free, so they were cool with him on that. He was obese, gasped carrying the heavy bag, and justified— as if he had to with them—smoking to avoid eating on his lunch break. He didn’t address that smoking pot made you hungry. Handling his issues his way.
And using an intuition he should have when playing cards with Beverly, Kyle said, “Beverly only said you told her there was a letter.”
She of course said she knew about the letter via her psychic gifts.
“I told her it was in General Delive
Kyle was going to have to start playing poker with Beverly with an intent to win. She hadn’t planned to tell him the letter was at General Delivery until he lost more money. But what about Reynold’s prophesy that he’d be taking a trip?
“Mike, have you read this letter?”
“Open mail? I got three kids. Lose my job, and that’s federal shit. Nobody at the P.O. opens mail. Nobody sane.”
“Insane?”
“Nobody I know would do it.”
“Can’t you deliver it to me?”
“Only you can pick it up.”
The post office was on a side street off Lincoln Boulevard, and was one of the old solid exterior buildings that survived the waves. It reflected Venice, so when Kyle presented at the General Delivery window, the young lady at the counter was a latter day hippie smiling at a brother, be it an elder.
She took the letter from its slot, was still smiling when she said, “You have to show ID.” and set it on a table just too far away to snatch and flee.
He had an expired library card that wasn’t ID and anyway wouldn’t be renewed until he paid the last late books fine, he had his lease from ”South Bronx Suites”, but nowhere on it was any proof of copied ID. He’d had his U S Army Honorable Discharge DD 214, but Babe once took it on herself to cull his not-so-good poems, twixt between was the discharge document which she said she “may have mistook for a poor poetic output and disposed of.”
The clerk was meditation high, medicated on meditation. He asked her smiling presentation, “Can’t you just give it to me?”
Still smiling, her teeth so white she must use whitening or have a front plate in, she said, ”There are supervisors here.”
“How do you start establishing ID?”
“A birth certificate?”
“I’d have to write to New York. How long do you hold a General Delivery letter for?”
“Not long. It gets returned if nobody claims it.”
The glow off her was repelling him. “That’s nothing to smile about. Can you stop? Won’t New York also want some proof I’m who I am?”
She didn’t stop beaming, yet was capable of speaking logically. Must be how she kept the job.” Details. I’d think DOB, hospital, parents’ names, address at the time, your social security number. You can probably do it online.”
“Yeah, there’s one computer we all share.”
“Cool.”
“You think so?”
He was thinking, this mail might be another trick like the notices to vacate.
“Where’s the letter from?”
“The return address is just symbols and initials, some kind of code I don’t understand.”
“You’re as ugly as dogshit.” She was beautiful if she’d stop the manic smiling, and that’s why he said that, to motivate a frown, some displeasure, anger, pity, any other expression, but she kept on radioactively.
”I hope the rest of your day sucks. That’s a koan.” He wasn’t qualified to suggest a koan, not even a Buddhist, but he was entitled to his opinion. She was badly in need of a little reality.
He played one hand of poker with Beverly in case she wasn’t completely full of shit, and asked, seeking an omen as to whether to commit a federal crime of not, “Beverly, Reynold says its good news. Is it or not?”
She said, “You know, Kyle, I haven’t read it.”
He hadn’t bid against himself yet. He did now.
“It’s about a poetry submission.”
“I never submit.”
“Your poetry is good.”
“Nice to hear that, but how can it be about a submission.”
“You never show it to anybody but Babe, but she showed it to me. We agreed to be your agents. Secret agents. We submitted your whole repertoire to a contest offering a big prize.”
“You did? This letter could just be rejection notice, couldn’t it?”
“Wrong. To save themselves time, they say if you don’t hear by a certain date, you weren’t considered. So you must at least be considered.”
“Could I have won?”
“I don’t know, but Babe as your guardian signed an agreement with me to be the actual agent, at 50 perecent.”
“Ás my GUARDIAN?”
“We went to court with doctor’s letters. Your disability. Your head, the PTSD.”
“Why hasn’t she told me any of this?”
“Probably because, as she tells me, she doesn’t even remember.”
“Don’t agents just get ten percent?”
“That’s here. This is international. So you see, I have a stake in seeing this letter also.”
“You’re a scammer.”
“You weren’t even trying. Anything’s better than nothing.”
Kyle was going to have to orchestrate a break-in, and Mike could help with the logistics. He made sure a certain window was left unlocked, and drew a floor plan map from there to the General Delivery counter, which was marked by letters above, and Kyle had been there, but he’d be going into a building on a dark street at night with a slim flashlight that shone a narrow beam.
The window Mike left unlocked was never-the-fuckin’-less stuck and only moved up a few inches. He was going to have to go back to ‘Scarsdale” to get a crowbar or something.
Reynold, owner of the community van for shopping and transportation, had a jack he could lend him. The window was on the dark side of the building at the back, by a vacant lot, but Kyle was starting to worry he might be attracting attention. And just as he had the window up and started to shimmy himself in, he heard a gravelly male voice say, “I need a short dog.”
Kyle was literate to such jargon, knew a short dog was a cheap bottle of high alcohol volume port wine.
“When I come out.” He was halfway in.
“Need it now.”
He could still hang on with one hand to the inside top of the window, splinters and all, and maneuver the other hand to his jeans pocket. He had there a five dollar bill he was stashing for another possible reading from Beverly, and placed it in the demanding hand at his hip.
“Bring my change back.”
“You have change coming, but if you don’t want it, I never saw you, and I won’t close the window either.”
He thought he could get the letter before the derelict made his run for the jug, but of course he could close it now. But he couldn’t lock him in. Could he? He could report him To dissuade him of doing anything before he made his run, Kyle said, “I’ll probably be in here a while”
He didn’t intend to be.
“Take your time. Best for you I never come back, right?”
”Right.”
“ ’Cept I live in this lot.”
He took Kyle’s five dollars and disappeared. Kyle finished dragging himself through, and dropped on his feet inside. He set Reynold’s jack on the floor away from the window, found his way with the narrow beam, ran into a steel mail cart and bruised his knee, but located the window, had to climb over it, then found the right slot and took his letter.
He crawled back out of the cubicle, but couldn’t take waiting until he was outside again to see what was in the envelope. He could see it had been opened, if carefully resealed. Was this where Reynold’s cosmic intuition came from? Was Reynold the reason the clerk was so ‘happy’? Not from meditation? At least not that uncomfortable sitting and contemplating kind.
He opened it and tried to read. By flashlight, he only saw phrases:
You are a short listed contender for the prize.
We will provide air transportation by private jet.
You will not know where you are going.
You will have to ride on a surfboard.
Back at the canals, Reynold asked, “Will you do it?”
“I don’t know.”
“For such an opportunity. Adventure?”
Beverly added, “Money.”
“Reynold, the letter was opened. How did you know I’d be taking a trip?”
“I had a flash.”
“I didn’t know you got flashes.”
“Beverly’s influence.”
‘The General Delivery woman didn’t tell you?”
“Not me.”
“But maybe somebody.”
Beverly said, “Kyle!”
The arrangements were made. A surfboard was provided, paid for in advance, from a sports shop, and Kyle gave surfing a try. The only thing he couldn’t do was stay standing up.
On the designated date, with Babe added to the group, Reynold drove them toward Santa Monica Airport. And on Lincoln Boulevard, Kyle noticed an unlikely couple. The pretty clerk was strolling with mailman Mike, now wearing civvies, and she had her hand around his substantial waist. Was Mike— Mike who worried about his job, his kids, his weight— the reason for her shiny face?
Kyle said, in general to all, “Will you look at that?”
Reynold, who looked the most uncomfortable but did have to watch the road, was not looking where Kyle was, and asked “What?”
“Mike with the General Delivery clerk?”
Beverly said, “You’re supposed to be blindfolded when we get to the airport. Let’s do that now.”
She had the blind handy. Kyle knew that was part of the deal, and let her put it in place.
He said “Reynold, I just saw Mike and the GD clerk looking pretty cozy.”
“They work together”
Beverly said, “You can’t see anything.”
“I saw….”
“You want to take the blind off and look again? You imagined something.”
“Kyle, did Mike tell you what was in the letter?”
Beverly was quick to speak before Reynold had a chance
“That question doesn’t deserve an answer.”
“Reynold?”
“I’m driving, man.”
Beverly said, “Will you two stop?”
Babe just kept repeating like a mantra, “You’re going to be FAMOUS.”
He knew he was at the airport when he was able to get up off the springs on Reynolds’ seats that were poking his ass. Still unseeing, he was guided along an outdoor area, then Babe kissed him, the others hugged, and some new, not ungentle, hands guided him up steps he assumed were to an aircraft.
They wanted the blindfold on, but served him coffee, and food as the flight progressed. He had trouble judging how much time was passing, but enough that they had to be going south to Latin America, north into Canada, west across the Pacific, or east along the U.S.
Then they landed, just for refueling, he was told. He was allowed to stretch his legs in the short aisles of the plane, and soon they were off again. Where the hell were they going? Where was he now? His hands were free, and for a second be broke the rules and raised the blindfold for a peek. He saw the skyline of New York City and that big body of water, known as the Atlantic Ocean, that they were moving toward.
He did then what your usual international air traveler does, he went to sleep. When they landed the second time, he thought, this must be it. And he was right.
He was met by new people with accents, and still blindfolded, driven some more in a car. Then he was brought indoors, the blinds removed, and shown a bedroom he was told would be his accommodation. They offered dinner, but he said a sandwich would do, he’d ate on the plane. They allowed him to shower and shave, provided some fresh clothes, then brought him back outside again. Now he could see where he was. He was in a place that was cold, rural, green, treeless, and windblown, yet magnificent in its stark wildness, a rugged beauty.
He’d been told not to bring the surfboard from Venice. They had a state of the art board for him. If only he was an artist.
His host, carrying the board, said, in that funny sounding English, “It’s October now. In summer, the surfers come here, but its hardly any warmer then and the waves no gentler.” Kyle saw camera crews setting up for an event. “To win the prize, you have to ride this surfboard down there.”
“I won a poetry prize.”
“That’s no armor against the world. You have to show honor.”
“How about a duel?”
“Your duel is the ocean, the waves. Reality.”
“I never surfed.”
“You never know what you can do until you try.”
“I did try.”
“Try again.”
“What if I want to forget this whole business?”
“On your own here, with your Yank accent? No passport, no ID. No family, friends, community. No money.”
“Sounds a bit like where I came from.”
“Oh, you had some of that there. That’s how you got here. But I don’t have to coax you. You know you came to do whatever it was.”
He was at the edge of a high cliff, and looked at an expanse of blue untamed waves that broke almost immediately to furious whitecaps, then rammed themselves into large grey rocks that if any fish, animal or human crashed against would become part of.
But he had an idea.
“Give me that surfboard.”
“Good man.”
The board was maybe fiberglass, felt expensive, and had a texture of heavy laminated plastic. By observation, before he started scaling down the cliff with it, Kyle saw that there were only seconds during which a wave existed before transitioning into a charging breaker. The surfers must have used the waves to demonstrate that they could ride them in that short period, then dive free He knew he would never surf there like them.
Just getting out was a matter of first leaving shore and doing what he had once done in Rockaway, which was dive under the encroaching breakers. It meant hugging the board tight when he lunged under.
The difference between surfing and “riding the breakers” were opposites. Surfers ride the crest of a wave. “Riding the breakers” was just that, being there as the wave broke and letting it take you to shore. He’d read the rules carefully now that he was here. Yes, he had to ride a surfboard. There was not one word that said he had to stand up. If he got out to where the waves were, he could lie on the board as a wave was forming and ride the breaker in. Except there were those rocks you’d blend with if you came in at the wrong spot. He’d have to calculate getting to shore between them. That was all.
The ghouls were filming from the coastline. Was he part of some Candid Camera Meets Adventure Tourism show. Live or die, they’d show it, and were probably rooting for the latter.
His objective was to position himself where those breakers were most likely to flow between the boulders. That would rely more on intuition than scientific data, but he gave it a little observation. He watched a three of four wave succession, hoping to choose his best embarkation point, but there seemed no correlation between where a wave broke and which part of it would slam the rocks.
Was he going back from whence he came— to the ocean—as Calvin had once theorized? Going to paint a rock in the sea with his body? Was that why he was here? Babe might have volunteered for this as an art project if they’d chosen her.
He picked a breaking wave, belly first on the board, his head several inches from the front, hugging it, with no assurance he wouldn’t hit a rock. This wave was the bullet train compared to Rockaway waves. It almost drowned him inside it, but he held on to the board, his hope of survival.
The board hit a rock alright, and the force pivoted his body upward. He felt and heard the board split, his mouth was full of salt water, he was gargling it, but then he was somehow free, dragged around the rock, discarded by it as if irrelevant, pulled in. rolling side to side like a carpet being moved, the board now in sections floating around him, until the wave lost interest in him as the rock had, and with the wave’s momentum gone it withdrew, abandoning him washed up on wet sand, flopping and convulsing like a poor catch not given the mercy of being thrown back in.
Incredibly, there was applause for this indignity. The crew cheered and came running. He was helped to his feet and held up. A microphone was shoved in his face. When he saw the camera, he tried to wipe the sand mud out of his eyes, off his nose and cheeks and lips. The spokesman or m.c. or whatever he was, addressed him.
“You win. Nobody else would do it.”
Expelling salt water from his nostrils, still gasping for air, he asked, “Why did you put me through this?”
“Your poetry’s superb, but who’s ever going to notice or pay you for that? Talent’s not enough. It might not even matter. You have to promote.”
“ Where am I?”
“Oh, back from where you started.”
“I’ve never been here before.”
“No? Well tell me then, where did all your grandfathers come from?”
“That fuckin’ ocean!”
“Aye”.
He placed a bottle of what seemed to Kyle to be warm brown beer in his hand. “I’ll say to that, Slainte. And to you, congratulations and welcome home to, as you say, a place you’ve never been before.”
