The Western Coast

by Paula Fox

  She pulled one end of the rope and the half-knot gave way—Joe’s life went in her hands. An involuntary gasp escaped her. Sigrid looked up from a scuffed suitcase she was emptying. Her face was blank of expression. Perhaps the whole family was like that—snow-faced.

  “My family’s going down the drain,” the gitl said. “I called relatives all afternoon from the police station. The ones that haven’t got phones got the news from the ones who have. They’re sending money. I got to get the body up to L.A. and get it on a train. They want him buried out there with the rest of the Swedes. But there’s got to be an inquest. Because of the way…he’s at the undertaker’s now being rouged up, I guess. I don’t want to know what they’re doing. It doesn’t count. What’s hard is how am I going to get the body to L.A.? It costs too much with the limousine. What are you looking so sick about? It’s my brother not yours.”

  “He was learning how to make knots.”

  “Getting ready to hang himself probably. But it was like Joey to start out with some idea and then drop it. He never could concentrate on anything for long. You should have heard my Aunt Tilda. She screamed so loud I dropped the phone, then she started right up about California being a sinful place and no wonder he’d killed himself—my Aunt Tilda been living with Indian men all these years, one right after the other. I think she kills them and sticks them in the floor of the icehouse when she’s through with them. Then I got this idea.” She paused and sat down on Joe’s cot. “Maybe it’s against the law. Listen. You know that little black-haired bitch drives the school bus? The one’s got a husband in the navy and is always fooling around with the Santa Ana soldiers? I thought maybe she’d drive me and Joey up to L.A. in that bus. What do you think?”

  Annie had seen the girl at the bar now and then. A greedy nervous girl who stirred up the indolent surface of the bar atmosphere like a water bug, her hands on people, men and women alike, or tending to her long black hair, swinging it back off her face, pulling it down one side, running her long soiled fingernails through it. She had confided in Annie once that she needed a gin fizz, pronto, after a rough night with a couple of boys from the base.

  “I’d pay her maybe fifty bucks. A lot less than I’d have to pay the undertaker. What do you think? Jesus! Here I got a body on my hands!”

  “Why did he do it?”

  “I can’t think about that. He was born too sad. Everything that happened made it worse. He should have been a preacher and had God. Then he would have known what he was supposed to do.” She was pleating her shirt in her hands, over and over. “I was pretty bad to him,” she said in a whisper. “I can’t think about it so don’t say anything to what I said.”

  The day following the inquest, which Sigrid attended in what she called her family dress—the one she had in case one of the aunts or uncles should ever come to California—Annie received a package from Ben Greenhouse. It contained, along with a note, a handsome string of large amber beads. She’d never owned anything so substantial. The note read: “Ann, I haven’t much to say except that you pleased me, even if not in the traditional way. I hope this string of amber matches something in your mind. I’m tucked back inside my life again, and for a while it won’t seem too bad. Be a good girl, not a halfhearted trollop. Your friend…”

  That day, Joe’s body in a pine coffin was loaded onto the school bus, the dark-haired girl in the driver’s seat, combing her hair with her fingers, a cigarette end smoking in a bottle cap at her feet. The policeman, Bob, had come along to help. Even with two other men from the undertaking parlor, it was hard to maneuver the box into the bus. They broke the back of one of the seats. “That’ll have to be paid for,” said the girl driver flatly. Sigrid got in, her white pocketbook clutched in her hands. She was staring at the coffin as the bus started off.

  When she returned, after two days, she remarked that every time the bus stopped, a line of cars behind the bus stopped too. It had made them laugh, her and the girl. She’d stopped in at the Greek’s, who wanted her and Annie to come back; business was good, a lot of plants going up around L.A. and out in the valley, and he needed some good waitresses. “He said you had class,” Sigrid reported snidely to Annie. Then she’d gone on a bat, she said, and drunk up half of Hollywood, and did Annie remember that fat crazy Finn used to come in and play Finlandia all the time? Well, she and he, they’d made a night of it, all drinking and sobbing but no funny business. He drank too much for that. It might have eased her mind, Sigrid said, a little roll in the hay, but the liquor was almost as good and she felt better now. “Jesus! I just don’t want to think about that gluey way he looked on the sand, and I’m not going to. They say when you kill yourself, your soul haunts the place you did it in. You won’t catch me on that beach ever!”

  Annie had found the apartment oppressive during Sigrid’s absence. All she was doing was biding time. Time for what? She’d had enough of the place. The golden purse of tips Ernie had promised had hardly materialized although she was making more money than she ever had, enough to buy lipsticks from the drugstore, and beach sandals, and things she’d never thought she’d have. She longed to leave the sleepy, sun-washed village with overpreserved, middle-aged rich folk driving their expensive cars through the main street and up into the hills to their fraudulent houses and stale pool water.

  She went dutifully to the drive-in but in her mind she was casting about for a place to go, a place to be. She thought, as she frequently did, in little flashes of memory, of Max Shore whose life was continuing elsewhere. Hers wasn’t.

  The empty room downstairs troubled her, its door open, the blackness within holding accusation against her of wastefulness and desolation. The whole story of Joe was a trouble in her mind. Although he surely hadn’t killed himself for love of her! A picture came and went in her mind, a child dragging cotton blankets out onto a field of snow.

  Then everything was solved for her temporarily, two weeks after Joe’s suicide. On a Saturday morning at 2:00 A.M., she heard someone stumbling around below on the seashells. She got up and went to the stoop—she’d lost certain night fears recently, as though her irritability with her life had made her brave.

  In the moonlight, Walter Vogel’s face was turned up toward her, and swept by feelings she didn’t pause to think about she raced down the stairs and threw herself in his arms.

  Chapter 13

  It was to be, Walter said, a vacation, time out before the serious matter of settling down. She had never heard of Yosemite. He had gone camping there as a boy; he wanted her to see it because it was the only place he loved—as places went on this earth. They would stop near Merced to pick up camping equipment from his uncles who were sheep ranchers. They were his father’s bachelor brothers, but, like Walter, had no truck with Mr. Vogel, even though they were of the same stripe. When last he’d seen them, he said, they were forming an organization of ranchers to prevent Orientals from buying land.

  Walter had not gone to Murmansk but to England, then to South America. It had been in Buenos Aires harbor where Walter, a Daily Worker gripped between his teeth, had dived off his ship and swum through the dark water to another American merchant ship to deliver the paper to a “comrade” in the black gang. He spoke of this feat frequently, with a satisfaction that appeared more piratical than political. There had been sharks in that harbor and foul patches of oil and dangerous patrols.

  He was histrionically astonished at Annie’s ignorance of what had happened that summer in Europe; she welcomed his reproaches; they sheltered her from deeper regrets. Her confession of ignorance was vigorous.

  Hadn’t she looked at a newspaper once? Hadn’t she known about Dunkirk? That the Germans were in Paris? That Italy had declared war on France? He frowned, shook his head, clucked. How had she managed to find such a decadent corner in which to dream away this critical summer? The job, she explained. He pushed that aside. Somewhere in her—he had known from the beginning—was an indolent dilettante. Why was she laughing? Oh, she was happy to see him! R
idiculous girl! The world was going to smash and she was happy to see him! She told him of the young man who had come to the drive-in one evening and wept copiously into his chocolate sundae at the fate of the churches of Europe; all that priceless stained glass that was going to be shattered by bombs, never to be replaced. “Sounds like one of your sort,” he commented.

  “What are your uncles like?” she asked, trying to imagine herself as the young bride on her way to meet new relatives.

  “They’re fat.”

  He hadn’t been to the ranch for years and would have to feel his way. They followed a blacktop road for miles, then turned left onto a dirt lane with a high turf ridge which scraped the bottom of the car. A light rain was falling. They both leaned forward squinting through the windshield.

  Walter cut the motor. The car’s headlights revealed a thick patch of bramble and tall weed. She heard the soft continuous tap of rain.

  He led the way to a small shed and pushed open the door without knocking.

  “Georgie! Herbie! Get up!” he shouted. They stepped inside, hearing the damp sad groans of sleeping fat men. Walter lit a match. Two large mounds lay on a bed with a metal headboard; a soiled pink blanket left bare large areas of mattress ticking. One thick foot hung over the side of the bed. Walter began a noisy search. After a moment, he appeared next to her with a kerosene lamp which he lit, squatting near the open door where he could make use of the lights of the car.

  Besides the bed, the room was furnished with a table upon which sat an empty bottle labeled Muscatel, and a kerosene stove. The only plumbing visible was a water tap which shot straight out of the wall and dripped into a bucket on the floor. Piles of clothes were scattered here and there.

  “The sheep get the best rooms,” Walter said. The fat men slept on. Walter suddenly jumped directly onto the bed and, hopping up and down, made loud baaing noises.

  A forlorn sigh issued from one of the mounds. There was a slight turbulence under the blanket as one of the sleepers rolled out from under it. He was clad in long winter underwear, the drop seat gaping. He knelt for a moment by the side of the bed, then, holding the mattress with huge pawlike hands, rose painfully to his feet and turned to see what was bothering him. Walter leaped to the floor next to him.

  “Why, Walter!” he cried in a dinky voice. He yawned and shook his head like a horse bothered by flies. “Why, you’ve stopped by to see us! Wake up, Herbie. Our only nephew’s here. Who’s that? You’ve brought a friend? Just smell that creosote! We’ve been shearing all day. Wait…I’ll get a chair for the lady.”

  He waddled to the door as Herbie rolled off the other side of the bed. He smiled when he saw Walter, staggered to the tap, turned it on full and smacked his face with handfuls of the water. “Must be late,” he mumbled. George returned to the shed carrying a stool which he placed just behind Annie. “Sit!” he said.

  The smell of creosote was powerful but a hideous odor leaked through it, small, secretive, stinging, vaguely sweet, unmistakably sour.

  “I see you’re still pleasingly plump,” Walter said. George laughed delightedly, his laugh as thin and childish as his voice.

  “I live to eat,” he said. Herbie mumbled something in the corner where he apparently preferred to remain. He’d draped a piece of tarpaulin over himself. “That’s right, Herbie,” George said.

  “Here’s my wife, Annie,” Walter said. “We’re going to Yosemite for a few days.”

  “That’s nice. A nice little wife. Yosemite’s a big place, not much good for anything.”

  “We need some pots and pans and a knife or two. I thought maybe you could loan us some gear. We’ll drop it by on our way back to L.A.”

  “Fine,” George said. “Come over to the tool shed and we’ll see what we’ve got.” He picked up the kerosene lamp and Walter and Annie followed him. She looked back and caught sight of Herbie crawling heavily into bed, his eyes already closed.

  The tool shed had electricity. George blew out the lamp saying it was no use to waste kerosene. He took a duffel bag from a hook and stretched it out on the floor and began to fill it with saucepans, a coffeepot, a frying pan, knives, cups, and tin dishes. He handed Walter a small ax.

  “I used to go camping when I was young and there was nothing else to occupy me. You’ll need some blankets. These smell of sheep, but they’ll do. The sleeping bags wore out, Walter. I’ve got some hand lines around here someplace. You like to fish, missus? I hope you got long pants. It’s cold this time of year. You got a job, Walter?”

  “I will have.”

  “You get to see your dad?” George looked at him steadily as Walter shook his head.

  “You shouldn’t be so hard on him. We all get old. You’re the only son he’s got.”

  “We didn’t choose each other.”

  George looked sad. “You ought not to treat a silly fellow as if he was wicked.”

  Walter said, “You don’t see him.”

  “Well, that’s different. I don’t like him,” said George.

  Walter seized the duffel bag and made for the car, George and Annie following. The bag was tossed into the back seat. Walter got in as George opened the door for Annie. “Nice little wife,” he said soothingly. He peered through the window at Walter.

  “You and Herbie doing well with the sheep?” Walter asked. He was twisting the choke button with his left hand, his right still held the small ax. Annie removed it from his grip. He gave her a quick uncertain look.

  George’s expression of smiling mildness changed. He turned into an egg with painted features. “We make a living,” he said shortly.

  “Come on, Uncle,” Walter said. “I bet you’ve got a fortune stowed away.”

  George backed away from the car. “On no account talk of such things!” he cried. “Our business is not yours! Runaway! You have removed yourself from this family! And I have just given you eighty dollars’ worth of camping equipment!”

  Walter backed violently toward the shed, then shot out onto the road. In the light from the dashboard, his face was pinched and rancorous and, Annie perceived, frightened. How long was it since he had seen those two? What stale cues had set Walter to baiting his uncle, and what accounted for that sudden rage of George’s as he flung his heft about in the weeds like a thrashing animal? Driving now at a speed which shook the little car from side to side, Walter bent over the wheel. Emptiness? The father brooding over bathtub rings, the two old sheep ranchers crawling out of their filthy bed morning after morning…was that Walter’s family? Three old men, two dirty, one clean.

  The rain had stopped. A light wind cleared the sky and the moon, looking a bit like Uncle Herbie, fled along the spines of the range of hills at the foot of which they were now traveling. Annie fell into a half-sleep, her head bumping against the window, her legs stiffly drawn up against the seat.

  When she woke, it was into utter silence. The rain had begun again. She could hear it tapping on leaves. They were parked on a dirt road in front of a large lodgelike building. Walter was smoking, leaning back, his head against the seat.

  “We can stay here tonight. I know a short cut to the valley up this road.”

  They walked into a gloomy room where two old men stood over a pinball machine next to a long bar. Here stood another old man dressed in a plaid wool shirt. Behind him, on a shelf, were two bottles of whiskey, one half empty.

  “How much?” demanded one of the men near the pinball game. “How much you gonna bet?”

  “I wouldn’t bet with you, you old sheep humper,” replied the other.

  The bartender said, “Hush! Here’s a lady!”

  Annie went to the lavatory at the end of the room. Inside, scrawled on the wall above the toilet, a message read: “We aim to please, you aim too, please.”

  Their bed consisted of planks covered with a piece of strawfilled ticking. From somewhere close by, she heard a voice, fuzzy, quarrelsome, “You gonna bet or I’m gonna tear you up!” There was a mumbled reply. She slept, awoke to hear
the drone of that exchange, unvarying, like a ritual, and the dry crackle of the straw as Walter stirred restlessly.

  A few miles along the rutted road they followed the next morning, the back wheels of the car sank into the mud. The smell of leaf mold was drugging, cool. Walter piled branches beneath the wheels and just as the car gained traction, the sun broke through and the light grew yellow and bouyant all at once. With a violent jerk, the car emerged from the wet dripping woods onto a paved road.

  “Here it is,” he said, and shut off the motor.

  Annie looked uncomprehendingly at the mild landscape, silent, green, winking where sunlight touched wet leaves. Walter laughed at her expression of disappointment. “Wait!” he said.

  He started up the car, rounded a turn and entered a tunnel. As they approached the exit, he slowed, and they crept out into daylight. Below them, gleaming as though an inland sea had only just ebbed away, was a long deep valley. A waterfall, an upended river, fell across the face of a bare rock escarp. A massive sunny silence lay across the valley like a wash of color, yet the naked rock faces, the wooded slopes, the vertical cliffs down which the white skeins of water tumbled all seemed fraught with turbulence.

  Farther on, they walked into a silent grove where redwood trees towered. A ranger’s cabin, boarded up, its roof fallen in, sat lightly on the forest floor. Nearby, they found a tree with a plaque embedded in its bark. Some of the redwoods, it read, had been growing since before the birth of Jesus Christ. It suggested the visitor might like to press the button just below and play a recording of Nelson Eddy singing Joyce Kilmer’s world-famous poem, Trees.

  They descended to the valley floor, where the Merced River wound among groves of silver pine and oak, past a lodge where a family stood on the rock terrace, posing for a man with a camera. In front of them—they were driving slowly—walked a forest ranger with stately steps, moving aside only when the car was nearly on his heels. In a clearing off the road, a woman hung wash on a line that extended from a small log cabin to a tree.