The Great Offshore Grounds

by Vanessa Veselka

  “When I start, I think, maybe a hilltop fort. This is really no hilltop, though, so, okay, I make a wall. I make a real castle. A real castle is a fortress so I measure the angles.”

  “Do you really think you’re going to get attacked?”

  “No.” He laughed.

  Soft cheeks, pink under his black-and-gray stubble. He took a fresh pack of cigarettes out of the breast pocket of his sleeveless jean jacket. Opening it, he arched an eyebrow at her. She didn’t respond.

  “Anyway.” He lit a cigarette for himself. “Attacks do not come like this now, yes? For these you need a mental wall.”

  He took a few drags. She turned back to the field. Black birds filled the upper half of the arrow slit then vanished.

  “Everything to be great is here,” he said, “but they don’t make it, I think. When I was a kid, I read books about Indians and it makes me so sad, I think when I come here, I want to meet some but when I came I find only Mexicans. I think, okay yes, I understand this. But then I see how they are to their own Indians and I say, what—is this whole world crazy? Okay. Then I’m crazy too. I build my castle.”

  She stepped off the bucket.

  “Why doesn’t the moat come back here?”

  “I run out of money to rent the backhoe. Spring maybe. There will be no water for a long time, though. I make my castle eco. I use the leftover stone pieces from the roof and the wall to make the bottom of the moat. Otherwise it just goes away, the water. I think like this for everything.”

  “So it will be stone.”

  “Yes, sure. For now, no. Only the wall.”

  “Are you going to make a drawbridge?”

  “I think about it but a drawbridge is too far.”

  She looked at him with a wide smile and started to laugh in a bell-like way. It was a sound she’d never heard come from herself before.

  “Okay, yes. I know it’s like this.” He stubbed his cigarette out. “But still. It is too much, a drawbridge. Like haha. ‘A castle.’ Maybe, though, I make a portcullis—is this the same word? My English gets so bad when I am alone. Growing up, I must learn Russian then Italian when I work in tourism. Then I must learn German when I leave. Now, I don’t care. I say good enough.”

  She looked at the masonry, at the beveled embrasures around the arrow slits, the variegated hand-cut stone tiles on the castle roof, the corbel framework.

  “But why? Why do this?”

  “Why? Because everything is ugly. I want to show how something beautiful is made.”

  “So you’ll let people come see it when you’re done?”

  “No. I think not. Maybe I change my mind.”

  She examined the back wall of the castle. The exterior wall was no more than fifteen feet with the tower rising another fifteen and the spire another five beyond that. Even with these, the whole thing was not so much bigger than a large house.

  Square in front of them was the keep. Just above the main tower in height, without corbels or buttresses, it was a tall solid block, Soviet in its simplicity. Attached was a small circular tower with a steep spire. It was the highest point on the building and what she’d first seen from the field. It was how she’d known it was a castle. He pointed to the roof of the turret.

  “I fell off that. I was sure I broke my back. I can’t move for hours. So much pain. I crawl to the trailer. I know I must have broken my back. I spend two days on the floor. I shit myself. I don’t care. Awful.”

  “Why didn’t you call someone?”

  “Who wants to live with a broken back? Shoot me like a horse. So I wait and it was fine. I finished it a week later.”

  He walked over to a barn door in the back of the keep. Grabbing a large handle with both hands and putting his body into it, he slid the door sideways a couple of feet and the sun coming through the crack hit the interior wall, painting on it a second bright doorway. They stepped in and he rolled the door shut. They were in darkness again.

  “Our eyes adjust faster this way.”

  She blinked. Brown shapes appeared in the corners. A square of dull light from a window high above fell on the ground.

  “This is for a siege, the murdering hole.” He raised a finger toward the window, which had no glass. “For pouring hot oil down on bad guys.” He laughed. “But I think I make it for no reason.”

  The keep was colder than she expected. She crossed her arms and rubbed her shoulders. The walls were framed but not sheeted. Building materials were stacked on pallets in the corners, and in buckets and on shelves were strips of wood.

  “Go up and take a look,” he said, raising his chin toward the stairs at the other side of the room.

  She climbed the stairs, pausing to test the boards. Looking out of the first window, she saw a pecan tree growing on the other side of the wall and what appeared to be a juvenile oak behind it.

  She crossed 2x8 planks laid down as a platform to the other window.

  Close to the trees she could see a small ravine with a creek that disappeared into a bush.

  “What will happen to the forest when you build the moat?”

  “I work around her.”

  “And the creek?” It was barely a trickle but the idea that it wouldn’t be there made her sad.

  “I don’t know,” he said, “we see.” He hovered over a thought. “What do you think?”

  “Of what?”

  “Of my castle,” he said quietly.

  She shifted nervously. He’d grown tender. She looked from the vantage of the scaffolding up at the spire beams then out at the wall.

  “I don’t understand it,” she said.

  “Ah,” he said, “don’t worry, lady. You are not alone. Most people not.” He offered her his hand as she came down the stairs but when she got to the bottom she noticed the hurt. He couldn’t look directly at her so she turned slightly so he wouldn’t have to.

  He took her back to the hallway, pitch-black again because she’d looked out the windows. But soon she saw brown bands across the floor where the hallway opened into other rooms with other small high windows. In a workroom she saw more shelves, neatly organized tile, a workbench, and, in the amber light, pieces of glass and wood cut into geometric shapes, glued or soldered together, parts of greater designs.

  He took her into the great hall, which—like the kitchen that served it, the royal bedchamber, and the orchard—was empty. There were no windows in the hall and had there not been one in the kitchen behind her, she wouldn’t have been able to see the thick curtain that hung between the hall and the tower.

  “I don’t want a god but a church is maybe good.”

  He pulled aside the curtain and sun poured across the floor.

  Cheyenne walked to the center of the tower room. It was an octagon and each side was not a wall but a window, tall and Gothic, filled with daytime. The floor was a parquet of handmade starburst tiles like she’d seen in the workroom.

  “It is not finished of course,” he said, but she could feel his pride like a wounded animal breathing behind her.

  Vaulted arches rose thirty feet above the ground to meet in an eight-way cross at the top. From there blue-and-white tile formed a star whose points almost touched the peak of the empty window frames.

  Light was everywhere and came in from all sides. On the wall in front of her was a kaleidoscope of gold and pomegranate red, amethyst and dragonfly-green light. She turned to see where it came from. On the south-facing side of the tower, high above the roof of the great hall, was a stained-glass window. The bottom was made up of thin panels that used elements of Alhambra geometry inside a carnival barrage of color, nothing uniform, no two hues alike. Above was a circle with a rose in it. The petals had been constructed of busted pool-table lampshades and opaque, ballet-slipper-pink transoms and sidelights salvaged off tacky suburban doors. The rose reminded her more of a heav
y metal tattoo than something from Eden. Yet it was exquisite in its diligence. As if it had been a real rose dipped in nitrogen and shattered into shards, each a piece of all that was worth it about the world, collected by the mason to make it whole again.

  “The national flower of Czechoslovakia,” he said. “Now Czech Republic and Slovakia. We cut it in half like a baby. I hate these stupid ideas. We are done with our tour. We have a snack.”

  He took a mandarin and a Granny Smith apple out of his jacket.

  “Like I said, she is not finished.”

  He handed her the mandarin and, taking out his knife, cut the skin off the apple in a single waxy spiral.

  “It’s just a hippie myth that you can live on fruit,” said Cheyenne.

  “I know soon enough, anyway, so I don’t care. If I get sick, maybe I know the hippies are lying.”

  She passed on the apple he offered her on the end of his knife and leaned against the wall.

  “Maybe you could make weird stained-glass windows for people,” said Cheyenne.

  “It doesn’t work. Everyone wants the kind of beauty only they can own. In Prague we have a clock from plague years. Still telling time. As a kid I am crazy about this clock. The man who makes it? They blind him so that he makes no other. Like the Caesars. Tourists come and say, haha, funny story, but when I am a boy and hear it, I don’t know whether to love this beautiful clock or hate it.”

  “Will you keep making things?”

  “I don’t think I put out my own eyes.”

  She ate a mandarin wedge and tried to put it into words.

  “When did you get okay with being nothing?” she asked.

  He scraped the apple peels into a pile on the floor with the back of his knife.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “It’s all right. I’m not mad.”

  “Do you know what I mean?”

  “Yes, sure, I know what you mean.”

  Just this. The not having to explain, something fell from her shoulders.

  “Building the castle helps. It’s good to have something to do that is very hard but has no point.” He tapped the starburst inlay with the butt of his knife. “A month of evenings after work, this takes me. Each square. And before I must figure out how to do it and what I like, every day. I do it over so many times till I find the right way. But what is she for? To walk on, so what?”

  “Like a Zen garden?”

  “Fuck no. I hate these guys.”

  “I think my mom is one.”

  He put the apple scraps into his jacket pocket. “Well maybe she’s okay.”

  “She might be more of a guru. I’m not really sure.”

  “Gurus are better. They live off rich white people, not poor stupid villagers.”

  She picked up the mandarin peels.

  “Leave them. I love this smell. Like my orchard.” He stood up. “Tonight we grill peaches with cinnamon and I make mangoes with cayenne. This is how the Mexicans do it.”

  Leaving the castle, Cheyenne wanted to be alone but didn’t know how to do it without being rude.

  After dinner Jirshi got a chunk of hash out of a mint tin on the counter. He stuck a couple of rolling papers together, then broke the filter off a cigarette and sprinkled its tobacco over the papers.

  “So lady, do you know what it is you do yet?”

  “I’m going to go in the morning. I can hitchhike. I’d rather do that and have money for a night in a motel if I need it.”

  “Okay sure.”

  He crumbled hash on the tobacco and rolled the cigarette up with the filter inside. He lit it and offered it to her. Afraid the drug effect from the other night might return, she declined. Everything was weird enough. He took a drag and exhaled. Silence charged the room. It was that moment, the one that always comes when maybe you’re going to have sex and maybe you’re not, and it only takes the slightest movement to tip it one way or another, just that whisper: Be human, be human, in this very place. She let the moment pass. Because everything was weird enough.

  43 Luck

  LIVY POUNDED ON THE DOOR. Jeremy had not been that hard to find. Returning without a boat, fish, or money, he had crawled back into the apartment by the wharf that he’d lived in for years.

  “Let me in, you bastard. The guy in the hall says you’re here.”

  Jeremy unlatched the door.

  “Pay me what you owe me.”

  “You got your share of nothing just like I did,” he said.

  He opened the door and walked off. He was wearing only a short green terry cloth robe and made a point of stretching to expose his butt cheeks before halting in the center of the one-room efficiency. He looked around like the room was a surprise to him too, barely any furniture, a plaid armchair folded out into a cot, a blue beanbag that had sprung a leak. He sat on a stool by the island counter of the kitchenette. His robe split open to show his fuzzy chest. A toilet flushed in the apartment above.

  “What?” he said.

  “You left us stranded.”

  “I couldn’t look at that fucking boat another day,” he said.

  “You think I wasn’t sick of that duct-taped fiberglass floatie piece of junk? You owe me. You don’t even know how much. You had fish tickets from our last haul. I saw them. What did you do with them?”

  “Cashed them for the plane ride out.”

  “Sell your permits,” she said.

  “Sold weeks ago.”

  “What about permanent fund money? I know checks went out. Where’s yours?”

  “In my ass!” he barked. “Come get it.” He opened his arms baring his chest. “Help yourself,” he said, “it’s right here.”

  “I hate you,” she said.

  “So what, me too.”

  “I have no pity for you. Find something.”

  Slope-shouldered, he retied his robe, then began to growl. He jumped up, startling Livy, and rounded the breakfast island and went to the fridge.

  “You know what?” he said. “I got something.” He opened the freezer and started throwing things on the counter. “Macaroni and cheese. Salisbury steak dinner. Another Salisbury steak. Mini tamales. A bag of Cajun tater tots.” He held up a box and shook it at her. “This is a chicken pot pie. I’ve been saving it because it’s my favorite but you can fucking have it.”

  “You know,” said Livy, coming around the counter, “I will have it. And whatever else you have too.” She pushed him aside and looked into the freezer. “Pound cake. That’s actually one of my favorites.” She threw it on the counter with the rest of the food.

  Jeremy looked like he was about to cry. She couldn’t watch. She started jamming frozen food into her backpack. She picked up the chicken pot pie and paused then threw it back into the freezer.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “Don’t talk to me.”

  * * *

  —

  She’d known he was broke. But she’d expected to pry $50 out of him at least or a stereo or a watch. Her head was aching and she felt cramps coming on. It could be the morning-after pill or the situation. A cloud bank hid the mountains. Trash was strewn over the sidewalk by bears. Ravens pecked at burger wrappers in the street, then flew to the power lines when cars came.

  She tried for on-dock work. Even if boats had been going out, she could not have made herself get on one. Offering to pull garbage or do maintenance, she asked around but no one took her up. All the male faces. They reminded her of the men she’d fished with and the men she’d played pool with, friends and brothers of friends, cousins of girlfriends. Men who had also made her who she was. Young beautiful men. She should have fucked one of them. Then there’d be less to take.

  By midafternoon the abdominal cramping was more intense. She passed a shelter with a window full of men milling around with coffee and couldn�
��t help but feel like she was on the wrong side of a glory hole. All that light, all that bareness, better to keep walking. She found a cold beach, a creek that glinted gold. She saw the black slippery heads of harbor seals and the silver flash of escaping salmon. It was getting dark. She was going nowhere. She had to turn around. Asking Sarah if she could stay another night ran against every instinct.

  Returning to the apartment she made her pathetic speech. Sarah said she was welcome. Livy handed her the partially thawed boxes of Salisbury steak she had been carting around all day. The apartment was warm, the radiator hissed, local radio was on in the kitchen.

  “I got you a phone from the domestic violence people,” Sarah said. “They get them donated. There’s minutes on it but I don’t know how much.”

  Livy felt her own anger burning. Sarah knew she’d be back. But it wasn’t her fault and it felt good just to be inside. Then the chatter started.

  “You’d think they’d give phones to runaways but they’re afraid of turning them into drug dealers and hookers. I mean they give the homeless people phones and I always think, so it’s okay for them to be dealers and hookers?”

  She was fluttery. Circling the same idea, asking variations of the same question.

  “Beer?”

  “Sure.”

  “Some people are stone-cold addicts and behavioral mod doesn’t do anything but for the rest of us it’s great. What do you think?”

  “I don’t know what we’re talking about.”

  “Whether social services should give phones to everyone in at-risk populations or just domestic violence groups,” said Sarah.

  “I don’t know. I hate phones. If you have one you’re supposed to answer it.”

  Sarah threw two Salisbury steaks in the microwave, stacked crossways, and set the timer for eight minutes.

  Livy watched the dinners rotate.

  “I don’t think that’s going to work,” she said.

  “Why not? Four minutes for one. Eight for two. Why do you think it won’t work? The microwave.”