Add This to the List of Things That You Are

by Chris Fink

  Something about buying shoes! Harry felt a childish excitement. Even though he was no runner, and even though these were a little big for him, he felt the urge to try on his dad’s new shoes and take them for a spin around the lot.

  He walked toward the cars, easily picking out his folks’ boxy sedan. Just as he passed the handicapped stalls, he heard a shriek. He turned to see a boy and his mother. They were attached at the wrist by a leash of some kind. Was that normal?

  Then the reason for the shriek, which had been one of genuine terror or surprise, revealed itself. The boy was waving his free hand at a royal blue helium balloon, which had escaped him. The balloon seemed to drift toward Harry out of a dream, and he reached out slowly to catch the string, affixed to a small plastic fish, a weight to prevent just this sort of accident. As Harry reached casually for the string, a slight updraft caught the balloon, lifting the too-small fish just beyond his outstretched hand.

  Harry gestured to the boy and mother. It would be all right. The balloon would come down now, Harry would see to that. The boy, maybe he was five or six, was tugging at the leash. He was a fat little boy, and he reminded Harry of himself at that age. Harry took a few nonchalant steps toward the balloon and reached to grab it. This time a major updraft caught the balloon and sent it scudding across the empty parking lot, until it luffed again, some dozen yards away. Amused, Harry broke into a trot. He caught up with the balloon and reached for it, casually grabbing for the small blue fish. The prize seemed easily within his grasp, yet Harry miscalculated, and once more the slippery fish squirted away. The wind was hard to judge, and Harry had tried to move quickly without appearing to expend effort. He wanted to impress the boy and his mother.

  Now, though, intending to be certain, he ran after the balloon. His feet, encased in sloppy loafers, slapped the asphalt, the big bag banging his thighs. Sure enough, though, he was gaining on the balloon.

  But when Harry dropped the bag to lighten his load, the wind came up and the balloon skated even faster along the parking lot. He looked back at the mother and son. They were hurrying toward him, or, rather, the mother was dragging the boy by the leash. The boy was crying. Don’t worry, Harry wanted to say. He was doing his best. He would catch the balloon. Harry had run about a hundred yards now. He was out of breath. The parking lot was like a huge landing strip. Jesus, the cars you could fit in a lot this size! He might not catch the balloon, after all. It might elude him.

  Harry’s early loafing was a tragic mistake, and now he must make up for it. But he was not fast enough to make up for it. He was not fast, period. He had never been fast. When Harry was in grade school he had convinced his mother to buy him new shoes for Track and Field Day. The shoes were called Zips, and the TV commercial showed a boy wearing Zips easily vaulting a healthy green hedge row. When the boy began to run, the Zips left only a blurry afterimage of a red Z across the TV screen—he was that fast. Harry’s mother bought him the Zips, but the Zips did Harry no good. During the race, when he saw that he would finish nowhere near the leader, he eased up, jogging toward the finish. Harry finished seventh in the fifty-yard dash. Two girls had beaten him.

  Harry’s father was in the bleachers that day. He had taken the day off work to see his boy run. The little grandstand was full of parents waving and shaking their fists to urge their children on. Not Harry’s dad. Harry’s dad sat quietly in the grandstand.

  Harry had forgotten all of this. He had forgotten he was so slow, such a faker. In races, as a boy, Harry would watch the fast boys closely to catch the secret of their swiftness. One of the fast boys kept his fingers together and his hands flat and straight, cutting the wind as he ran. Harry tried this aerodynamic technique, but it didn’t work for him. Another of the fast boys knotted his hands into fists and pumped them like pistons, but Harry’s pumping fists did not propel him toward the finish line any faster. It wasn’t fair. Oh, how Harry suffered his slowness all those childhood years.

  Luckily for Harry, the trait that was all-important in his youth had little consequence in adulthood. Back home in Denver, Harry drove a big Chrysler with eight cylinders. He had learned to conceal his lack of talent and natural ability in the accoutrements of prosperity. He was not an athletic child, to be sure, but he was a clever student, and he had become a reasonably successful adult. Until now. Because he had been a slow boy, he felt the need to fake nonchalance as a man, and it cost him. After all these years, seventh place still hurt him. And it hurt his dad, Harry’s need to act as if he didn’t care, as if he weren’t trying.

  Forget the brat and his mother. Harry wanted that fish, hung by a string beneath the fat balloon. He wanted it for himself, and for his dad. It was the blue ribbon he failed to deliver before. Harry ran panicked, sprinting with all his ability. He felt his dad’s car keys jangling in his pocket, and he felt the wind, generated by his own speed, whipping his hair, and Harry heard the cars on the freeway rush by like the sound of cheers. One of Harry’s sloppy loafers flopped off his foot and spun along the asphalt behind him. Harry was cooking now, boy, if only his dad could see him run!

  But he was too late. The balloon lifted up several stories dangling its fish mockingly as it winked in the sun. It drifted toward a stand of trees at the border of the buzzing freeway. Harry had missed his chance. No amount of effort would rescue him now. He slowed down, and the balloon gained ground. He continued to jog but without hope. He ran only because there was space to run, the landing strip reaching out yet in front of him.

  At the limit of the landing strip, the stand of trees waved in the wind. The trees were a buffer against the freeway. Looking closer, Harry saw they were aspens. A gust of wind turned the bright-green aspen leaves backward to their pale sides: a thousand pale fists shook at him.

  Harry stopped running. The balloon was gone into the sky. He had run a long way, but for no use. He hadn’t done anyone any good. He turned and headed back toward the Fast Foot, where everything had started. His shoe lay on the asphalt like a dropped baton. He saw the boy and his mother. They were small across the vast lot. Harry squinted into the sun. The mother was still dragging the boy, but this time away, back toward the cluster of cars. In her other hand she carried a big white shopping bag.

  Hey! Harry yelled. Stop! He wanted to tell the mother and son that he had done his best. He could explain everything: his loafing, his tragic lack of speed.

  There was something else he wanted to account for now. Harry wanted to tell the boy and his mother that his father was a good man. No matter what happened. He went about his own business, nurturing his own small talent faithfully and without claptrap even into his autumn years. No one really knew Dennis Lutz, least of all Harry or his mother, but there wasn’t a soul who would say a bad word against him. No sir. Dennis Lutz had never chiseled, swindled, nor borne false witness. He was neither selfish nor conceited.

  How about you, Harry? Next to his father Harry knew he was no kind of man.

  Stop! he yelled again. But no one could hear, and he was too tired to run. The mother and son climbed into their getaway car, a foreign model Harry couldn’t ID, and raced breakneck across the empty parking spots toward the exit. What was Mount Horeb coming to where such a thing would happen in broad daylight? Those criminals. They had taken away his father’s gift.

  Birds of Paradise

  They trod along the old oxcart path to see the famed strand of emerald sand that necklaced the southern limit of the island. Burgess had read about the beach in his Baedeker and had convinced Blyth to come here after their visit to the volcanoes. Now, yoked with daypacks, they traipsed along the ancient dirt trail, the fine red dust rising from their feet enveloping them. The travelers linked hands over the deep rut cloven by the oxen hooves, while on either side ran the thinner grooves cleft by the wagon wheels. These furrows sprawled out over the rolling land in cursive toward the uneven eastern horizon. To the south was the expanse of the ocean. They had already hiked much further than the two miles suggested in the Baedeke
r.

  This is like the Oregon Trail, Burgess offered. I feel like we’re headed for the Willamite Valley. A new beginning.

  Willamette, Blyth returned. It’s the Willamette Valley and this is an island. It appears our destiny is not so brilliantly manifest. How much longer? Blyth repositioned her canvas backpack and groaned. Her back was already soaked where the backpack rested. She let go of Burgess’s hand, and now the chasm created by the rumbling of the oxen was unspanned between them.

  It’s just over this next rise, Burgess said. They say this is the only green sand beach in the world. The grains of sand glisten like emeralds. And there is a dramatic precipice. We won’t miss it.

  Well I think we’ve passed it up, said Blyth. She gestured toward the ocean. That sand over there looks green. Anyway, the world is full of beaches.

  Blyth had wanted to spend the entire day at the volcanoes. You’ll get bored with the volcanoes, he had told her as they drove the rental along the highway that girdled the island. You’ve said so yourself. We don’t actually get to see the eruptions. It’s all underground. Most of those things have been dormant for years. You have to be lucky to see any fireworks. That’s what the guidebook says anyway. And you’ve been there already. Besides, a swim afterward will be refreshing. And the sand will be green. Can you imagine?

  Blyth bent. After all, this was Burgess’s trip. His first from the mainland, and such a long way from Blue River, Wisconsin. Sure it was their first trip together, but this was really for Burgess. So he would have some common ground with her. So he could be where she had been so much and understand. But Burgess was a difficult student. He was always professing textbook knowledge about things she knew from experience. Always trying to come across as more sophisticated than he was. They had spent the day arguing about the goddess of volcanoes.

  The natives give her gin so she won’t get angry, Burgess had said, reading his Baedeker as they walked across the barren charcoal surface of a crater. It’s part of their religion. Look at this picture. It’s Gordon’s gin. I wouldn’t bribe a goddess with cheap gin.

  They don’t give her gin to placate her, Blyth had responded. They give it as a gift to honor her. There’s a difference between placating someone and giving someone a gift to honor her.

  And so it went that they could agree on almost nothing—neither the tint and texture of the exotic birds of paradise growing abundantly on the island nor the name and origin of the tiny green lizards that wriggled loose of their tails when Burgess managed to grab one.

  They’re geckos, said Blyth.

  They’re axolotls, said Burgess. Plumed serpents. Keepers of the Aztec spirit. They are venerated here.

  There are no Aztecs on this island, you ass. People like geckos because they eat flies.

  Blyth led Burgess through the last of the volcano craters and upward toward the car. Looking back, Burgess remarked that the sundry crater beds gave the impression of a minefield.

  Wait, he said, unloading his expensive camera. One last picture.

  When they finally got to the ocean after a two-hour drive southward, it was a new set of circumstances.

  Look at those waves, Burgess exclaimed, gesturing toward the surf. Those must be six-footers.

  Those are two-footers, Blyth replied. You always think they’re bigger than they really are.

  And now they had been hiking for more than an hour and still no green sand.

  You and your guidebook, said Blyth. I told you those distances couldn’t be trusted. Did you pack the sun lotion? We’re getting burned.

  Burgess reached over his shoulder into his backpack for the lotion. It was next to the bottle of wine he had packed secretly for after their swim. For a surprise. He handed the lotion over the crevasse and Blyth accepted. When their fingers touched, Burgess felt the touch. It came down to that. She applied the lotion to the back of her reddening forehead, face, and neck. As she did so, the tops of her ears folded perceptibly under her massaging fingers. My word, she was lovely. He longed to touch her there, to feel the flexible cartilage ebb and flow beneath the pressure of his fingers.

  Well lo and behold. Blyth’s voice brought him back to the surface. Rounding a bend they recognized the view they had both seen in the guidebook. It was indeed impressive. Carved granite swept out from the red dirt and sparse grass toward the promise of the ocean. The headland was frozen there like a motionless tidal wave, never to reach the blue. Below would be the promised jeweled beach.

  And there it was. Not quite so green as the obviously retouched photo in the guidebook. Certainly not emerald. More aged copper bathed in black. But it stood out against the crystalline blue ocean and the black relief of the precipice above. Jesus, Blyth, it’s beautiful. Burgess dropped his pack and wrestled his camera out. Looking through the viewfinder, he carefully cropped out the other sunbathers who weren’t supposed to be there. He snapped one photo and changed the angle. He snapped another and another, including one with Blyth in the foreground, a gust of wind removing a shock of blonde from an ear-top. He could already see the photo framed in cherry on his living room wall. That’s the green sand beach Blyth and I visited, he could hear himself telling his visitors. It’s the only one in the world. I swam there.

  And so the promise of fulfilling the photograph pushed Burgess down the steep incline toward the beach. He pulled Blyth along after.

  On the green sand at last, Burgess changed into his suit under his beach towel and waited for Blyth to follow. His bare white feet sparkled greenish.

  I’m not going to swim, she said. It’s not hot enough. Go on. I’ll watch.

  Save me, he said, if the waves pearl me. He grinned, using the new word she had taught him. Then he added, Those must be six-footers, and ran to the surf. Rather than gingerly wetting his toes, Burgess dived in head first. He played in the surf for a while, and the biggest waves he had ever seen sent him ass over teakettle. Why couldn’t Blyth get in and enjoy this also, to frolic and splash, and to forget everything. Out here! he called, waving. But she wasn’t coming. She sat splendidly on the beach, now in her bikini, her face tilted toward the sun. She was inscrutable.

  Burgess wanted to impress her. This whole trip he had wanted to impress her and show her he wasn’t, as she said, provincial. He tried to know things. But that came off bad. And now here he was acting like a kid in the waves, thrilled about something that for her was mundane. For her, a bird of paradise was just a dandelion.

  He swam out past the surf. Blyth had been giving him lessons, and he would impress her with his open-water swimming. He swam toward the mouth of the bay, intending to climb out at the foot of the black precipice. He would climb up a span and then dive off. He could dive. And so he floated southward toward the open ocean, the waves coming in series to stymie his progress. He turned to see Blyth on the beach and got doused by a wave.

  At the foot of the outcrop the waves dashed. The outcrop was black volcanic rock, sharp and uneven. This whole island was probably volcanic. He certainly wasn’t going to climb onto these rocks without getting cut up, perhaps crushed. There was no foothold, and the waves were too strong. He would swim back, and he wouldn’t mention to Blyth that he had meant to climb up. He had just gone for a nice ocean swim. Did she notice his stroke?

  Burgess turned back toward the beach, and suddenly Blyth seemed farther away than she had ever been. He had read in his Baedeker that the currents were so treacherous on this side of the island that an unwary swimmer would get an express trip to Antarctica if he ventured too far out—the currents swept that way. Fishermen here used to tie themselves to shore after so many had been lost.

  Can you imagine? Burgess had wondered aloud, repeating the subject he had broached before. Rowing and rowing out there and all the time getting farther and farther from shore? Rowing harder and drifting farther. At what point would you give up?

  You’d never give up, said Blyth. You can’t read a forgone conclusion.

  Burgess remembered the conversation. Luckily, h
e was still in the protected waters of the cove. Wasn’t he? His swimming was coming along, Blyth had said so herself. He took perhaps two dozen freestyle strokes, rolling his body like Blyth taught him, stretching, trying to relax. When he looked again toward the beach, Blyth remained a glinting statue. He hadn’t gotten any closer.

  Suddenly it dawned on Burgess that he would drown. The feeling came over him as surely as a wave, nauseating. The ocean was a thing apart from the land. It had an appetite that was unimaginable from shore. There was no land anywhere beneath Burgess now, only a depth of mystery that could cause such green. The six-foot waves swept in to the beach, but out here beyond the surf there was only a turmoil of frenzied currents. Each time a wave swelled, his vision of the beach was obscured, and he was alone in the world.

  He switched to a steady breaststroke. He knew Blyth was watching him. He knew if he flailed she would take notice. When working as a lifeguard she said she watched the strokes swimmers took. She knew if they sped up, became erratic, that they could be in trouble. Burgess tried to measure his stroke, but he began to tire.

  What was Blyth thinking as she sat there on the beach? How can I rescue him, she would wonder, without injuring his manhood? She was gracious like that, concerned with an intact manhood. She could pretend she was just cooling off. Burgess was all done worrying about his manhood. All he wanted was to be saved by his Blyth. He wanted to be on the beach, the beautiful green-sand beach, and he wanted to be stuck to her like a thousand tiny emerald grains of sand, to put his head in her lap and keep it there always.

  Can you imagine? Burgess thought. He composed himself. If he wasn’t getting closer, at least he wasn’t getting farther away. Was he? He stopped swimming and began to tread water. Blyth moved from her reclining position. Had she come to rescue him at last? What a lovely picture she made against the verdant sand. Burgess drifted with the swell and ebb of the ocean tide. Afloat there, he began to imagine in islands, each thought untethered from the next. Could she even see him from the beach? His head bobbed above the surface, like a seagull perhaps, or some piece of wrapper that had blown away from a happy beachgoer.