by Mark McGhee
Nothing. I walked to my car and walked away from a dead person. A person I called friend. A person I kissed. A person that held me and laughed with me in a dark place. I walked away from her with not so much as a quarter for her hand. How do you take that back? I couldn’t accept it? I couldn’t see you? I didn’t and wouldn’t see you, Amber? Oh dear God! Oh my fucking God forgive me. I walked by you and didn’t stop for a second. But I think I saw, through a haze in your eyes, you recognized me, Amber. And that hurts the most of all……because I walked past you like I was better than you. But I carry that, Amber. I carry that in my soul. That day and that moment, Amber. I carry that pain in my soul.
And she’s here.
I know that.
She’s here.
She’s been here so long.
These are things I know.
Walking the sleep. How many days DAY. How many nights. NIGHT. I’m so in and out of awake now that I cannot sense reality as it were. I thought none of it mattered, DAY. NIGHT. But when I come back it seems to matter. I tried to stay where I was.
The pier. San Clemente. Seems a safe place for me but then I wake walking. Sometimes it makes no sense. Sometimes it all makes the perfect sense. DAY. Today it makes no sense. There is nothing around me that makes sense and I am out of my TIME and SPACE.
My place. I have no clue of where I am today. DAY. It’s green and there are many trees. There are explosions all around me and screaming. How long have I been walking the sleep? Where is this place. Cannons smash down trees and there are bullets whizzing past me. I cringe though I am not in danger. I cannot be killed. I wish I could be. There are people dying all around me and I see their souls leave their bodies as people scream and cry around me. I’m wearing a Confederate uniform. A young man screams in front of me. His leg is gone and his intestines are shining, gleaming in the spring morning sun. I reach towards him and he screams louder. He stares at me in terror. “No!!!! No!!!! get away from me!!!” I scream to his friends. A kid no more than sixteen rushes to him but he stares at me. A bullet rips through the skull of his friend and he is standing next to me. We watch together as he writhes in agony. Slowly he turns his head to me.
“Are you Jesus?” I shake my head as I watch his friend die.
“How old are you?” I ask.
‘”Fifteen sir, is he going to be okay?” I shake my head. He leaves his body and stands next to us. “What’s going on!!!!!” he screams. The explosions erupt around us.
A cannon rounds blows the head off of another soldier and the three of us stand watching the mayhem. A silence falls as they all stare at me.
It’s suddenly very quiet
“What should we do, sir???”
“Huh?”
“You’re an officer. What should we do????”
“You’re dead.”
“What do you mean?” asks the youngest. He has long golden hair and a fresh uniform.
“I mean you’re dead and you’ve been dead for maybe a hundred and fifty years.”
I turn and walk. They follow me for a few miles. I finally stop and sit with them.
“What should we do, Sir? Should we flank them?”
I stare hard at the oldest of the group. He’s maybe eighteen and his uniform is encrusted with crimson stains. A scar above his eye that is blue. Blinded blue.
“You’re dead. This war ended about one hundred and fifty years ago! All of you are dead! Your parents are dead. If you had kids – they are dead. Guess what – if they had kids – they’re dead too!!! No one even remembers you. Get it!!!”
The youngest looked at me hard. Sad. “What do we do, sir?”
“I don’t know, son. Where did you grow up?”
“Arkansas, sir. Walnut Creek.”
“Well, walk there and maybe there will be someone waiting for you. Same thing for you two. Head home. If no one’s there, maybe it’ll be better to at least wander around some place you know”
“Thank ya kindly, sir.”
They all nod and one by one, slowly begin walking into the distance.
The first one stops a few hundred yards below a bluff and salutes me. I send a salute back.
Chapter 14
“You’re not dead, Sam.”
“I never said I was.”
“Yes, you did.”
“Did I?”
“What’s your game?”
“No game. Selling booze and smokes, kid.”
“You’re a thousand years old, Sam. I figured that out.”
Sam punches numbers into the cash register and takes money for a tall boy and a pack of sunflower seeds. He wraps them in a brown bag and bids a good day to another dreg.
I watch and see that he is not dead because no one sees me, but all see him here.
“Why do you see me?”
“I see lots of things. I’m a stayer.”
“Fuck you, Sam! You’re not dead. Why do you see all this shit, see me, know shit I can’t?”
“I don’t know. I might have told you things you couldn’t hear back then. You might have ended up like a lot of these…”
A man with half of his head missing buys a pack of Camels and is searching his pockets. He looks confused as he searches his pockets for money.
“Take em’ on the house, brother.”
The man looks at him with confusion in his eye. The left eye is dangling near his chin. He smiles.
“Thanks. I guess I left my wallet in my car.”
“Where’s your car?”
“I don’t know.” He looks outside to the parking lot. “I was driving on the 55 freeway. South. Going to my son’s graduation in Newport. I guess I got lost.”
“Walk out and go left. Here’s some matches. Keep walking south to MacArthur. and head left about two miles down the road. You’re dead. People waiting for you over there.”
The disfigured man lights a cigarette and turns. He looks at me.
“What happened?”
I have to look down for a second. His one blue eye is piercing me. Pleading.
“You’re done.” I whisper. I look into the blue eye. “You’re dead. Go now and don’t wander around. Don’t talk to anyone else.”
He looks at me again for an answer. A last glimpse and a muffled “Thank you…” he walks out and heads south.
“More dead people are seeing me now, Sam.”
“Yeah, I can see that.”
“Are you sure I died out there?”
“Yeah. I saw it. I saw the guy who paid for it.”
“What do you mean?”
“I heard the conversation. A big biker thug. He met those two out there. Door was open. He handed both some bills and your picture. He has been back here a few times.”
“Why?”
“Some biker club you were with a long time ago? You used to be a biker, right?”
“Years ago. Way before this happened!”
“Not long enough ago seems. He paid those guys to kill you. That’s about all I know. Looked like a simple robbery, but you were a marked man.”
“Is that what I was doing here? I don’t remember living here.”
“Looks like.”
“So, you’re not dead are you?”
“I’m here and I’m there. Yeah. I’m dead. ”
I decide to hang around in the store for awhile. I sit in the corner and sip a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. I watch the people come and go. Some are dead and some are not. I watch Sam direct the newly dead back to where they ended.
Sometimes I make eye contact with the dead. Newly dead. They are more cognizant it seems to see me. The living do not see me but sometimes they sense me. A furtive look. A shudder. A nervous glance over their shoulder. A scratching of the head and a quicker decision on what they want to buy.
And sometimes I see the marked. The ones that are making their last purchases and I know, within the hour, that they are going to die very soon. I watch them. I can’t explain it completely, but I know when someone is about to get killed, kill the
mselves, or just die.
And things start coming back. My life starts to unfold as the fog lifts from my brain. Slowly, still foggy. Not a hundred percent clear, but returning, I am seeing things as they were before I came here. Before I began wandering, walking, dreaming, and seeing.
I sip the whiskey from the bottle and think. And I see myself. I was running when I came here, to this place in Santa Ana. I remember sleeping for days in my apartment, or some place I called home, not far from here. I remember wandering the beaches alive. I recall, before arriving here, that I was a teacher. A professor of minor note, but a teacher at a university. I began to hear my name in my mind, see my name, and sense my real person. I recall walking into personnel where I was a professor. Some college, somewhere, and handing in my resignation. I was slurring my words. I recall their looks of embarrassment.
“Take care of yourself, Mr. Thomas”
I took the last of my payroll check and stumbled out of the offices. I drove left the university. I rode off on a black Harley swerving around cars. I rode and rode until the bike stopped. I pushed it on its side like a wounded beast and walked. And there is a fuzziness there.
I am cashing my check and taking money out. I have quite a bit of money it seems. And I walk. I walk from San Clemente to San Diego. All the way to the Mexican border. I cannot cross because I cannot find my passport. So I walk back again through the beaches and towns. Mostly I stay on the shores. I stop and I eat. I drink. I walk the darker streets at night and buy whiskey. And I sleep on the beach. I am aware that with each day I am regarded with more disdain by the people I pass on the beaches. People sunning, and surfing, and swimming with friends. I take a board from the beach in Carlsbad and paddle out in my boxers. I am drunk but I catch wave after wave. As I paddle in I see three young surfers waiting for me.
“What the fuck, you kook!?”
He grabs the board from my hands. A yellow Infinity. I mumble Sorry. The other two are laughing.
“Back off, Brad!” a long haired surfer yells at him, laughing, “That old kook shredded with yer board, leave him alone. Surfs better than you!”
I shuffle over to my clothes. I hear them all laughing but I’m glad to not be punched because I feel weak.
“Hey, you old fucking washout, kook! Next time ask!” Yells the one they called Brad. I wave and say sorry as they keep laughing to each other. I feel ashamed but a little good as they laugh at Brad.
I dress and stumble on.
I finally noticed my stench when I could not enter the smallest restaurant, or café, along the beaches. With money in hand I was yelled at. I was in Capo Beach and I walked in to get a bowl of chips and salsa. I had begun to survive on them for some time I believe. A small place near the shore. Mexican café and people everywhere. People stepped away and back from me. The looks of disgust and disdain. A woman covered her nose. I walked in and grabbed a beer from the cooler, a bowl of chips and threw a $20 bill at the waiter. The manager grabbed the $20 bill and shoved it in my hand. I’ve become ragged and filthy without knowing it. I didn’t know.
“Stay the fuck out of here!”
He pushed me out the door as people parted before me. The looks on their faces burned into me. I walked with my chips, crossed over to the beach, and never walked back over again, except in the darker hours to get a bottle from a liquor store.
That was shame. That was disgust. Watching the little blonde haired girl in her pink sundress wrinkle her nose and look at me with fear. That sent me quietly into the night. Sleeping under the pier. Finding a safe place to sleep in the day so I would not offend or scare anymore.
Sam set up a place for me in the back. I sometimes helped serve the dead. I sat in the back when he went home to his family, or wherever it was that Sam went. I didn’t ask. When there were too many dead asking, and sometimes pleading, I would come out and serve them when he was gone. The others couldn’t hear or see the dead. None of them stole or walked out.
They wanted to purchase and when Sam was gone, it was only me that could help and see them. Beer, whiskey, vodka, tequila, and smokes. A favorite snack. I attended to the dead when Sam was gone. I gave them what they asked for, I told them where they were dead, directed them away.
I warned of the ravens and told them not to wander, not to walk the sleep, and to cross over. I was rewarded each day with Sam’s friendship and whiskey, and cigarettes. I no longer had to ask for things and I no longer had to pay. I had long since run out of money anyway. So I worked and was paid in whiskey and cigarettes. When Sam was gone I sat in the back with the mops and cleaners. I came out to service the dead. When there were none, I sat and reconstructed my life. Sam gave me a place. A place not to wander, a place not to fall into the abyss of walking the sleep.
In my corner, when I was not shaken from my place from the dead pleading for cigarettes and booze, I wandered safely through what brought me here. And I sat. I sipped whiskey. I smoked. I dreamt, I wandered safely.
Sam had saved me on many levels. I wasn’t looking over my shoulder for ravens, falling into someone else’s tortured memories, waking in places that made me scream and pray. This was a safe place for me.
Before I had crossed, before that night, I saw in my little room, the days before. I walked many days on that side. Many days at the beach and on the piers from Newport Beach to Redondo Beach. Walking north to Santa Cruz, watching the big wave riders at Mavericks in awe and wonder.
Men who paddled into waves that were thundering, freight trains, waiting for their mangled bodies to be washed to shore, and seeing them pop up again, paddling through walls of white water high as a three story building. I watched many days in amazement at feats I was never brave enough to ever consider. I walked north to the foggy shores of San Francisco. Sleeping and walking there was peaceful and less judgmental.
On further north. Inland to walk the Russian River. Picking blackberries and occasionally being welcomed for dinner here and there along the winding Russian River by people that loved and didn’t judge. People with guitars and fire-pits. Offering a meal and laughter to a torn and ragged man. A man who looked without a dime to his name but carried thousands of dollars in his torn and ragged clothes. I had occasionally stopped and counted money. I had near fifty thousand dollars at one point.
I’m not sure but I have hazed memories of cashing everything in, walking away with fat pockets of money that I didn’t really want but knew I should take. I had given away so much money. Bought so many people so much but I never checked the balances much. Just out of curiosity I counted it from time to time. I was eventually in the ten thousand dollar range. Never robbed, never lost a dollar that I didn’t give away. I washed my face in a beach bathroom near Jenner as I walked to River’s End. Where the Russian River flows into the icy Pacific at Goat’s Rock. My mother’s favorite place in the entire world. I was a mess. No wonder no one ever thought of robbing me, no one would want to touch me. But there were many kind people along the way. Sometimes I slipped away into the night as everyone slept. A scribbled thank you and a few hundred dollar bills. I never wanted to take anything even with Charity expressed, I never wanted to take without giving back.
So I continued. I walked down to the end of the river and was birthed back again into the pacific ocean as it poured warmly into the frigid northern California pacific. Here there are no surfers or bathers. Fog rolls in and out. The waves are treacherous and pounding reef and rock to formations that worship. The seals swim up the river looking for a freshwater snack, poking their heads out to curiously watch the ragged man sitting on the shore, smoking, smiling, and then back to their business. It was cold there even in spring, but I stayed through summer. I ventured inland to find a thrift store, changed my clothes, secured my money and my .45 auto into the lining of my jacket. I wasn’t so worried about losing the money but the gun was for a purpose. I was searching for the right time and place for that. I hadn’t found it. But I would need it when the time came. How many days I slept in the sand. R
olled into a ball with my bottle of whiskey, my money and .45 hugging me closely, but not caring to lose the booze, nor the money, but the gun would stay with me. As fall approached I began my trek south. The mornings were so bitter cold and wet, I couldn’t take the rattling of my bones and teeth in the deep hours of the night. When my bonfire ran out, and the whiskey was gone, my bones rattled and shook. The dampness and fog crept through me and the loneliness began to poke it’s sharp face and ugly nose into my dreams.
And when there was no more comfort in a place, I had to move. I can’t remember how many months I walked back and along the coast until I reached the oil dykes and tar stained shores north of Long Beach. But I continued on until Huntington Beach. It was a good place to be in the fall. Long stretches – miles of empty beaches as the children of summer hibernated and went home. Only locals surfing or walking the beaches.
And I was invisible to most. I ventured onto the pier when my stomach began flipping and churning after days of no food. So many offers of free food there I kindly refused. I always paid and sometimes received an odd look when I pulled a roll of bills from my tattered jacket. I only ate when I had to. There are times the body forces one to eat, when the whiskey, and vodka, and gin – refuse to go down. When you drink it down and it rolls back out of your throat foaming and crashing in time to the surf. Then it’s time to force food down. The best I could go was five days before forcing a burrito down and then rolling in agony in the sand. Waiting and hoping, praying it could stay down. And when it did I felt better for a few minutes. A few Gator-aids and a nap under the pier. Then a hike over to the liquor store for a bottle to begin my trek again. If I could force down some food and a Gator-aid, suffer the pain, then I could get another five or six days of straight booze. It was my way of life. I always had to come out for a short while if I wanted to continue this way.