“Professor. Computer science. She was a prodigy. When she was a child, she tested off the charts. IQ. Her father was a factory worker. Mother was a waitress — they were Okies.”
“Okies?”
“Poor whites from Bakersfield. They didn’t know what to do with a child like that. They were afraid of her in some ways, I think.”
“Okies,” Asha said. “That’s a funny name.” He saw her smile.
They were driving off the mountain that separated Limantour from Point Reyes Station and Tomales Bay. The ocean massive spread out along the coast, and in front of it marshes with their fresh-water greenish-silver ponds. The scene looked like some fabulous plein-air painting.
“You don’t have to go. I’ll turn around,” he said. “We’ll call Neel.”
“Neel knows. We spoke this morning I begged him to understand. Tell me more about that summer,” she said. “When you and Jennifer came here.”
“I wanted a boy. It was stupid, but I was hoping it was a boy,” O’Higgins said. “Stupid.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know anymore. I can’t remember. Maybe because of those boys I’d seen killed. My men — I don’t know. Now I can’t imagine the world without my daughter,” he said.
***
It was late in the afternoon, but Jen didn’t want to leave. He could see groups of people trooping off the beach that was now almost empty. The foam on the waves pushed up with each succeeding breaker. The tide coming in.
“What do you think our life will be like in ten years?” Jennifer asked.
“Busy,” he said, joking.
“No, really. Will you still love me? I’ll be old. I’ll probably start to look like my mom.” Jennifer said.
“Your mom is pretty,” he said.
“Stop being so nice. You don’t have to be.”
“She is,” he said.
“Don’t you wonder — what it will be like? Our lives? If we’ll have other kids. This kid, what she’ll be like? If you and I will even be together?” She was wearing a maternity swimsuit and he thought she looked fetching. He’d loved the way she’d looked in it. Her pregnancy had never put him off.
“We should go,” he said. “It’s getting late.”
“No. I don’t want to. I don’t want to go home yet. Will you still love me when I’m old? Guys are — they get tired of wives, don’t they? Don’t you guys talk about girls? Cute girls, girls who aren’t fat? You can tell me,” she said. “I want to know.”
“What’s wrong, baby?” he said.
“I’m … not sure. It’s like I’m getting an error message, and I don’t understand why,” she said. “I keep searching ‘Mother’ and I get site not found. Just feel — strange. I feel good here by the ocean.”
They didn’t leave until after dark that night. She had the baby the following week. She was the best mother he’d thought he’d known. It was that night at the hospital waiting for fatherhood that he let the war finally go for good. The noise of it was the last to go. The noise of war was what people heard long after they came home. They couldn’t explain it to those who weren’t there and never heard it.
***
The big dirt parking lot at Limantour State Beach was nearly empty. From where he’d parked they couldn’t see the beach, only the dunes that he knew separated him from the view of the ocean. A few horse trailers were parked at one end. The wind was blowing. He could see the Pampas grass on the dunes blowing wildly.
A new dark blue Lexus SUV pulled into the parking lot. He recognized Colonel Das behind the wheel. The big man got out of the car almost immediately, walked to the back of the Lexus and took out a plastic red jerry can. He looked their way, then walked toward them until he was standing beside O’Higgins’ side of the car.
O’Higgins rolled down the window and handed the Colonel Kumar’s iPhone. The Colonel took it and slipped it into his pants pocket without saying a word, then walked on down toward the beach. They could hear the wind blowing as O’Higgins rolled the window up. They watched the Colonel disappear over the top of the dunes, his black turban standing out.
“I wanted to marry since I was twelve or so,” Asha said, watching the Colonel disappear over the hill. “Indian women — it is so important, marriage. The idea of it, of having a family, rich or poor, university women or slum dweller. It’s all girls think about, being a wife and a mother. I don’t think that will ever change.”
“Do you trust him? Nirad? That he’ll do what he says?” O’Higgins said.
“I have to. What choice do I have? I wish you — would you maybe, if you go to India someday. Would you go see them, my girls? Take your daughter. Is she pretty, your daughter?”
“Yes.” He reached for her, and they held each other. It felt awkward and desperate.
“I never expected to fall in love with you,” he said. It sounded strange, but it was true.
“It was fate. I believe in that,” she said, holding him. “I’m sorry we didn’t have more time.”
“I don’t want —”
She let go of him and put her finger on his lips. She took a ring off of her finger. It was a dark ruby ring, a big one.
“Give this to your daughter. Please. Tell her it’s from me. A gift.”
Asha got out of the car. He wanted to get out, but saw Jennifer standing in the grass, wearing her maternity swimsuit, and it frightened him.
“If it was Jennifer going,” he said out loud. If it was Jennifer going to help Rebecca, would you stop her? Wouldn’t you want her to go? Isn’t that what Rishi would want? He watched Asha Chaundhry walk down the empty sand-colored parking lot, the wind blowing around her, the way it had on the ferry that first time he’d seen her.
“He believes wives should not live if their husbands die.” Should I have lived? He felt paralyzed, as if he’d been wounded. He started the Ford’s engine, heard the heater’s fan start to blare. He didn’t move for a moment, then he took off the parking brake and began to back up, at first slowly. Then he swung the wheel hard and headed across the dirt lot. He didn’t want to understand what Asha was feeling, but he did understand. He’d felt it, too, for so long. It was Death’s call and it was powerful.
He headed away from the beach. He heard the shouts of war again. He saw Nirad Chaundhry sitting with his lawyer, saw the smug look that crossed Nirad’s face. He saw his daughter on the swing set in their back yard, Jennifer pushing her. He saw himself reloading during the battle of Fallujah when he’d gone mad. He saw the deer on White’s Hill tumbling through the golden summer’s grass, rolling, its body crushing the grass.
His Ford slowed when he got to the asphalt. He reached for the door. He was tired of death and its ways. Was it the rich, then, who had put him there in Fallujah? And was it a billionaire now who would get his way? Death, that was all the rich seemed to know, or create. He was tired of it.
“With these people, it seemed always to be about death,” he said aloud.
The Ford’s driver’s-side door was open, the wind cold, the car’s engine on. He climbed out, not bothering to turn off the ignition. He picked up the blue flashing police light and fixed the light to the top of the Ford. He walked down the asphalt to where he knew the bathrooms were, with the outdoor showers Jennifer used to wash Rebecca’s feet after they’d left the beach. The shower to his left, he looked up at the dunes and the trail that would take him out to the beach. He pulled the Glock-19 out of its holster and headed toward the sound of the surf, the big pistol at his side. It felt familiar in his hand.
As he struggled in his dress shoes through the sand he heard his wife’s voice, and saw she was walking with him. He stopped. I’m going mad. He looked down at the pistol.
“It’s the right thing, Michael,” Jennifer said. “Come on — I’ll help you. With the water. Don’t be afraid. It’s just the ocean,” his wife said. “We love
d the ocean, you and I.”
He was walking, the sand white grey, the grass on the dunes turning teal colored in the wind, the gusts strong. He got to the pedestrian bridge over a wetland behind the beach. He felt it then, all of it, crashing through his defenses, the fear of all of it. He looked for his wife, but she’d disappeared. He looked ahead toward the top of the dune and Jennifer was waving to him.
I can’t, he thought.
He was frozen. He turned and looked at the water on the wet land, almost black, its surface rippled by strong winds. Ducks were harboring in the water, their heads tucked down. It was a kind of lake, ducks and grass and wind all on its grey surface.
He began to walk again, realizing he had to hurry. He started to jog up the last hill, the sand giving way under him as he climbed the dune. He could hear the ocean clearly, loud and unmistakable. It was the sound he had been so afraid of. It was a raw unforgiving sound of the universe moving through all time and all space.
He sank to his knees just at the crest, as if he’d been hit, almost dropping his weapon. On all fours he looked up. I can’t.
“Yes, you can.” He heard Jennifer’s voice. She helped him get up and led him to the top of the dune. And then he saw it. The enemy full face, daring him. The Pacific Ocean staring at him, crashing against the sand, its voice a blue-white roar.
“You’re all right now, Michael,” Jennifer said. “It’s all right. I love you.”
He looked to his side and Jennifer was standing next to him. She was dressed as she’d been the day of the accident. Then she was gone. He looked for her but saw instead a fire start far down on the beach, smoke pulled from it—a thin trail of grey black spinning up into the darker sky.
He began to run down the dune and toward the fire.
He’d decided to run on the strip of wet sand where the surf broke, the waves washing over his shoes, his pistol at his side. The beach was foggy. The fog, having pushed down from Point Arena, covered Point Reyes so that the famous white lighthouse at the tip of the point was hidden, the whole of Point Reyes peninsula draped in grey like a heavy soldier’s coat.
Das had taken her up the beach to a place where the cliffs were broken up, making little indents in the sand stone. But he could see the smoke from the nascent fire; it sat on the beach drifting toward the water in bursts like the tail of a kite. He tried not to look at the water, but he could hear it over his labored breath.
He turned once to his left and saw a wave crest, its white foam outline plain and stark as it collapsed onto the wet bird-strewn sand. He heard his wife’s scream as she was taken by the shark. He fell down, unable to get up, trembling with fear. He saw his pistol, black on the sand where it had fallen, the surf washing white foamy water over it.
He sat his knees in the surf, the ocean rushing around him. He had been so terrified by what he’d heard while he swam towards Rebecca his arms numb. And since that moment, he’d been afraid that he would hear it again. Now he realized he’d been using up every ounce of his strength to suppress those last moments with his wife, but he couldn’t anymore. The strain of it had finally broken him open and left him like this: just a thing stranded on the edge of the surf, exposed to all that horror again.
It was the feel of the salt water rolling over him — the taste of the ocean in his mouth — the way it had been that day that finally broke him down.
***
“I’ll go,” he’d managed to say to Jennifer. She’d let go of his hand. He started to swim, his life jacket making it almost impossible. He remembered that moment so clearly, the release of her hand, and immediately they started to move apart, the ocean tearing at them like bits of nothing, like so much flotsam from the boat that surrounded them. A wave rolled over his face, and when he looked, Jennifer had disappeared behind the inflating life raft.
He heard himself screaming as he’d screamed that day his wife was ripped away from him. His mouth filled with water and dregs of sand from the breaking surf. He screamed and stood up and looked out toward the north and saw that the smoke from the fire had built a kind of black line over the surf break, thin and pleading.
It hadn’t been the water he was afraid of all this time. It was seeing Jennifer taken. He’d done everything in his power to not re-live that moment. It was as if he too were gone now. A great chunk of him went out to sea and he let it go without even trying. The fear had died, finally, disappearing. Gone forever.
He looked at the sliding water around him for his weapon. The surf rushed away, leaving bits of foam caught out quivering in the wind.
“You have to go,” he heard Jennifer’s voice. “You have to go now, Michael. Go!”
He turned and saw his wife. She was in shorts and wearing the backpack she’d worn when they’d been in Asia, years before, after they’d first met. He’d thought that there was one person in the world who could trip the lock and open him up to find what he’d been before the war, and he’d found her. She’d brought him back to life made him fully human again.
“Go,” she said.
“I can’t.”
“You have to, Michael. She needs you.”
“I can’t. Didn’t I die, too? That day? This is all a dream, isn’t it?” He was transported to Angkor Wat again, standing in a long dark stone hallway littered with carvings and history. It had felt ancient-alive, full of the marrow of history. The carvings were grey-green, some marked with the scars of modern war.
“Jen!” He’d called her name because he’d lost sight of her, and she’d come out around a corner, laughing.
“I’m here, silly.” It had started to rain over the Angkor Wat ruins, a tremendous rain shower, a magnificent downpour. Cleansing, he’d thought. They’d held each other and looked out at the magical rain beating against the temples, the sky beautifully mottled.
“Did I die, Jen?”
He watched her walk into the ocean. She picked up his weapon and threw it back toward him. It lay on the sand at his feet. He could smell the smoke from up the beach, acrid. He bent down and picked up his pistol. He looked out at the ocean. It was flat, fog-covered, cruel, unfeeling, moot. He looked out at it, then turned and ran up the beach, his shoes sodden. His eyes stung from the salt water.
Asha was climbing a huge pile of bleached drift wood logs that had collected for years in the snag of the cliff. The logs came from all over Asia on their trip to Limantour. The Colonel had doused one end of the enormous pile with gasoline and was videoing the fire for Nirad to watch. Asha climbed toward the crude pyre’s top spot, the smoke sometimes obscuring her progress. The top was a tangle of great, upturned, bleached-by-the-sun logs, pushed around by the ocean until they’d been left here after one terrible storm after another. A haphazardly built Storm Temple.
It was a place he recognized. His daughter had climbed the huge tangle of driftwood, and they’d often come and taken small pieces from the pile for their campfires. It was where the sandstone cliff had collapsed in places, leaving a colorful, almost new looking gold cliff face, perfect. Raw.
The Colonel was holding his cell phone out in front of him, the jerry can beside him. He turned and looked at O’Higgins.
He ran by Das, ignoring him, and started to climb the pyre. He could hear the fire’s ripping sound as it darted over and between the logs, smelling of gasoline. He turned and saw the Colonel lower his phone and reach for something. It was a look he recognized. He raised his Glock and fired. He emptied his pistol, the shots hammering the big man in the face. He turned and scrambled up the pyre toward Asha, the burning logs rolling dangerously underfoot, the heat terrible by the time he reached her.
***
His brother’s house on the mesa in Bolinas had a view of Duxbury Reef. It was a two-story shingled Craftsman and very old, its wet shingles stuck out in the rain. It was empty when they walked in. It had started to rain as hard as he’d ever seen it as they made their way dow
n Highway One turning right off the road from Limantour. They had not spoken from the moment he’d fired his weapon.
“It’s my brother’s place. He works in San Francisco. But he has a girlfriend … He’ll stay there with her,” O’Higgins said.
“Why, Michael? Why?” It was the first thing Asha said to him since he’d shot the Colonel dead.
“We’ll have something to drink,” he said. “You’re wet.”
She slapped him across the face. Her boots were still ash-covered, smeared dark from the flaming pyre he’d pulled her off. He just stared down at her boots, the horrible sight of her sitting on the pyre. The sound of the crashing surf, the look on her face, the resignation and the fear on it, too. Das holding a camera, recording it all.
“You’re safe here,” was all he said. They were both wet from the walk up to the house in the rain, the house fenced on one side by old cypress trees.
“Do you think I would be grateful? Is that what you thought?” she said angrily.
“I don’t know what I thought,” he said. “I’m in love with you. That’s it. That’s what I know. That’s what I think.”
“You’re a bloody fool! You can’t fix this! Don’t you understand? He owns India. It’s his to do with as he likes. Did you think you can stop that? I need to call him and explain. I’m going to tell him it’s your fault! I’m going to tell him you shot Das —” She turned and walked into the living room with a big picture window. Outside was Duxbury Reef, the ocean sliding violently around its black rocks.
“I wasn’t afraid,” she said, moving toward the window, realizing what she was seeing.
“You’re wet,” he said stupidly.
“I wasn’t afraid of dying. I thought I would be. I thought I couldn’t do it, sati. When I saw the Colonel dousing the wood with gasoline — I just thought of my mother waiting for the girls. There’s a big room with a view of the street at my parents’ house. I thought of that room with my mother and her piano waiting for the girls. It was as if I was there with her, waiting for them. Why did you stop it?”
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