Cage's Bend

by Carter Coleman

  “Let’s go to Santa Cruz for my birthday.”

  “Why?”

  “I told Carla the White Witch that I was contemplating a birthday sojourn in Santa Cruz and she read her Tarots. The gist—a good omen. She wants to go with me!”

  “Take her.” Emma sucks in noisily, holds the smoke in her lungs.

  “I want to take you.”

  “So what?”

  I cartwheel across the floor and dive onto the bed and brush my lips against hers.

  “You really care about me?” Emma’s eyes look almost normal.

  “Yeah, sometimes you’re sweeter than Tupelo honey. You’re very pretty. You’re smart. You’re Episcopalian. You—”

  “No, I’m not.” Her eyes flash like lightning bolts against a clear blue sky. She blows smoke in my face. “I’m not a fucking Episcopalian.”

  “If thy mistress some rich anger shows”—I take her hand—“let her rave and feed deep upon her peerless eyes.”

  “Another dead poet?”

  “Keats. Paraphrased. What did your father do to you?” I ask her for the twentieth time.

  “Nothing. He was never there.” Her voice is detached. “Not for me. Not for my mother. He’s a lunatic. I think he fucked half the women in his church.”

  “The lonely ones. The ones whose husbands died or dumped them?”

  “Yeah.” She exhales smoke and smiles sardonically, which makes her face look forty years old. “The lonely ones and the horny ones.”

  “He made you and your mama miserable.” I lie on my back and watch her over my forehead.

  “I grew up watching them fight. When I was about ten, Mom told me, ‘Never marry a handsome man.’ It took me about a year to figure out what she meant. Then Dad up in the pulpit. Please. Whiskeypalians. Cocktail Christians.”

  “They were sticking it out until you left home?”

  “Yeah. Living a lie.” Emma takes another drag, chokes back a cough.

  “Did he get nailed?”

  “No.” Emma smiles again ruefully like a middle-aged divorcée. “No. When I was sixteen, Mom moved to Hong Kong with an old boyfriend and dumped me in Portland with my grand’rents, you know, these nice old alcoholics who spend their golden years playing bridge and golf. They tried to help. They found a therapist to help me deal with my anger and rejection.”

  “That obviously worked beautifully.” I reach up and touch her cheek.

  Emma laughs, a sad sound.

  “Your dad’s still in Seattle?”

  “Negative. Rumors flew after Mom cruised. The vestry let him know that he should bolt at the first opportunity. He left Seattle, moved to L.A. St. something. He’s probably up to his old tricks.”

  “I’m sorry. My parents have been faithful to each other for forty years.”

  “You sure?”

  “Pretty damn. Let’s go to Santa Cruz.”

  “I lost my car.”

  “I got us train tickets to San Jose. Bus tickets to the Cruz.”

  “You’ve been up for two, three days.”

  “I know. I’m überdude.”

  “Did you fuck me five ways to Sunday the other morning or was I dreaming?”

  “Might have been me. Might have been my doppelgänger.”

  Emma laughs, her face young again. “Your what?”

  “The other Cage, my alter ego.”

  “I like him.” She holds out the hand-rolled cigarette. “Smoking it’s not so bad.”

  I shake my head. “Don’t want to be smackified. I’ve got principles. Besides, tobacco makes me cough like a man dying of tuberculosis. You think you can get by just smoking it?”

  “With your alterbanger by my side.” Emma smiles and strokes the hair out of my eyes. “I might even go cold turkey. I’ve got a friend in Santa Cruz. Her name’s Alisa.” Emma laughs gleefully. “Yeah. We should go and see her. Last time, she told me not to come back until I stopped shooting up.”

  “It’s been thirty-six hours.” I kiss her and roll off the bed onto my feet. “That counts.”

  Just after midnight I feel a positive, mystical vibe in Santa Cruz, the hippie surfer enclave nestled between the mountains and the sea. Maybe it’s the full moon. Maybe it’s because I just logged another orbit around the great gasbag in the sky. Or maybe it’s the acid that we dropped as the bus descended the steep mountain pass on a serpentine road, leaving Silicon Valley. Or all of the above.

  “Wow. The stars,” Emma says. “It’s kicking in. Definitely kicking in.”

  “What do you see?”

  “Well . . .” She looks at me, then back at the sky. “Whoa. There it was again. You know . . .”

  “No. Tell me.”

  “It’s not doing this to you?”

  “Doing what?”

  Emma looks at me again. Even in the pale moonlight her eyes have a strong electric gleam. Then she drops her head back on her shoulders. “Whoa. There it goes. The stars all streak at once.”

  “Like going into hyperspace on the original Star Wars?”

  “Exactly.” Emma laughs.

  “No,” I say. “But the moon is so bright and soooo 3-D. You can see how much it weighs.”

  “I know what you mean.” Nodding her head like a serious child, Emma starts moving along a path by a stream that winds toward the sea beyond a big sixties roller coaster that looks derelict in the dark. In the still night the sound of waves hitting the shore carries for a quarter mile. The bicycle path climbs out of the river bottom away from the fun fair into curving rows of little houses set on a hill, follows an alley between backyards to the point of a peninsula that sticks out into the Monterey Bay. Emma stares in silence at the crashing waves. I take her by the hand and lead her on the path which curves along the sea cliffs for a time, then swings inland uphill to a bridge crossing another little river coming out of the mountains. In the middle of the bridge Emma stops and points at hundreds of poles sticking up out of a low blanket of fog, like needles in a pincushion. Moonlight colors the fog top a swirling yellow. Lightning spears the blackness of the bay but the thunder is too far to carry and overhead the sky is still clear.

  “Masts,” I say. “Santa Cruz Harbor.”

  “Boats are cool,” Emma says.

  We cross the bridge, then walk downhill into the fog, lit inside by a few tall lamps, past some hulls on scaffolds and a closed taqueria toward three long docks that run out into the small harbor. On the bay side, surf pounds against a barrier wall.

  “Look how the fog hangs just a foot over the water,” Emma says.

  “Like a curtain.”

  Not a soul is around. The wind slaps the halyards against the masts like chimes. Only a small square of chain-link fence framed by barbed wire blocks off the entrance to each dock. I set my guitar by the chain-link door and walk on the rocks to the edge of the water, where I climb up on the fence, then swing myself around, ripping a bit of my sleeve and pants leg as I pull myself to the other side.

  “So acrobatic,” Emma says.

  “Cat burglar.” I open the door. She laughs and hands me the guitar.

  “Look at her. What a beauty.” Most of the sixty boats berthed along the dock are expensive and well kept. Silicon Valley sailors. “That ketch is all teak and mahogany.”

  At the end of the dock Emma says, “Play a song, Cage.”

  I strum the guitar and start making up words. “There’s a part of me that’s a part of you, there’s a part of you that’s a part of me, too, like the moon in the fog, like the salt in the sea, I’m faithful as a dog, but you sting like a bee.”

  Laughing, Emma starts to sing, “There’s a part of you that’s a part of me . . .”

  Strumming on, I look around, expecting to see a rent-a-cop or Harbor Patrol or the poe-lice but there’s nobody. Emma dances around with an air mic as if onstage. “There’s a part of me that’s a part of you.” Her voice is not bad. Big raindrops splatter on the wood and the water, a storm from nowhere. I shout through the downpour. “Shit, I left my
case at what’s-her-name’s.”

  “Alisa’s.” Emma raises her arms into the air and dances in a small circle, catching raindrops in her mouth.

  “Yeah, Alisa’s.” I sling the strap over my shoulder and dash for the stern of the nearest boat I see with a canvas cover over the cockpit. Day Tripper is written in scroll across the stern. “How apro-fucking-pos!” I shout. The strangest coincidences always occur when tripping. Synchronicity. Climbing up a rope ladder slung over the starboard gunnel, I hum the Police song and try to remember the words. That song must be sixteen years old now, B.E. Before Emma. At least her rock and roll cognizance.

  Rain plops on the canopy. It’s dry underneath. There’s a towel on one of the cushions. Synchronicity, mon amis. I wipe off the guitar. Emma dances around in the rain, laughing, then climbs on board drenched, her hair stuck to her cheeks. I throw her the towel and say, “Maybe there’s another one around here.”

  The door to the cabin is unbolted. I am the man they warned you about when they told you to keep your doors locked. Stepping down inside, I paw blindly until I find the switch to three low-voltage bulbs at intervals along the ceiling. Inside it’s shipshape. There are ramen noodles and canned soups above the gas stove, a closet full of storm gear. Emma comes into the weak light, stands dripping just inside the door, and looks around, turning her head in slow motion. I pull off her Prada cashmere sweater and T-shirt and wrap a dry towel around her. She flops onto the narrow bunk built against the port hull at chair level. The rain on the deck overhead sounds like galloping horses. Stretching out on the starboard, I find the bunk’s too short for my boots. The intricacies of the wood grain are a world of dimensions and hue.

  “Cage.”

  “Yes.”

  “Sail us someplace.”

  “How’d you know I can sail?”

  “You look like the sailor who fell from grace with the sea.” Emma laughs.

  “That movie was definitely B.E.”

  “Cable seems to be A.C.” Emma laughs.

  “Like Kris Kristofferson?”

  “Yeah. You look like him. A young him.”

  “You said I looked like Jeff Bridges.”

  “You do!” Emma laughs. “Except when you’re on acid. Then you look like the sailor who fell from grace with the sea.”

  She crosses the cabin, letting the towel fall, and leans over me, her small breasts more triangular as they hang down. “Come on, Captain Cage. The gods have sent us here. We’re supposed to sail somewhere. It’s our destiny.”

  “Hello, gorgeous.” I stroke her cheek. “You know, LSD turns off my libido like flicking a switch. Maybe it’s fear . . . while you’re fucking, your partner might transmogrify into a large reptile.”

  “Fuck your libido.” Emma’s eyes burn like little gas flames. “Who’s talking about libidos? Let’s go for a cruise.”

  “Where do you want to go?”

  “Back to San Francisco.”

  “I’ve done a lot of stupid things in my life, but I’m not going to steal a sailboat.” Swinging my body under her chest, I manage to stand up. “Sorry, I was suddenly claustrophobic.” I bend over, pick up the towel, drape it around her thin shoulders. “You don’t want to get too cold. I doubt your immune system is operating at peak efficiency.”

  “Let’s sail back to the city.”

  “I don’t have charts. I’ve never sailed in the Pacific, which is a different ocean than the Atlantic entirely.”

  “Brilliant observation.” Emma is very pale, her face bluish around the lips. She’s probably getting hypothermia and doesn’t feel it.

  “You know what I mean.” I search the drawers below the bunks until I find a polypropylene shirt, which I pull over Emma’s head. “Put your arms in those sleeves. You’re acting like a four-year-old.”

  “I’m sure there’s a chart of the coast. There’s everything else in this boat.”

  “No way, Emma.”

  “Listen.” She cocks her ear toward the ceiling.

  “The rain’s stopped.”

  She smiles. “Another sign.”

  “You’ve got a death wish, little girl.”

  “Another brilliant deduction.”

  “Well, I’m not going to be the vessel of your destruction.” I put my hands on her shoulders and shake her gently. “I’m trying to help you.”

  “Baby,” she sings, “you’ll never be the one who saves me.”

  I let her go and leave the cabin. Outside, the passing storm took the fog with it. The moon splashes mercury across the surface of the harbor, which is starting to rise with a swell. A ten-knot wind rattles the lines. I haven’t sailed since I sort of soloed from Nantucket to Martha’s Vineyard. Jack Ransom was on board but he sat back and let me make every move. Ten years ago to the month. A sign? The wind is perfect. How nice it would be to tack across the wind, the boat heeling at a steep angle, nothing but water in every direction.

  Without saying anything Emma comes up and wrings water from her sweater onto the deck, then hangs it on a line to dry in the wind. She turns and holds out a key attached to a small yellow float like Eve with the apple.

  “Tell you what.” I take the key. “If she starts, we’ll take Day Tripper out for a run in the moonlight and have her back here before dawn.”

  Emma claps her hands together in delight just like a little girl.

  The engine turns over a couple of times and catches.

  “Untie us from the starboard cleats.” I unhitch the lines on the port, then leap off the stern to unclip from the dock and jump back on board with the rope, wind it in a figure eight around my hand and elbow, then tuck the coil under the deck. “All set?”

  “Aye aye, Skipper.”

  Behind the helm I engage the prop and the boat moves slowly out of the berth into the harbor. Approaching the gap in the barrier walls is like nosing up the Mississippi. I push the throttle lever forward a bit. The foam of the breakers sprays white on top of the rocks, disappears, sprays higher. The storm kicked up a swell and the waves are getting bigger. Emma moves to the bow, leans over the water, a junkie figurehead. I yell, “Hold on!” As we pass through the gap, the waves pound the hull and we ride up the curling face of the breaker that cascades across the deck, then we rush down its back into the trough where another breaker towers above us.

  Knocked back on the deck, Emma lies laughing on her back. Stupid of me not to have clipped her in a harness or a life jacket. Too risky to tell her to come back to the cockpit now. “Hold on, Emma!” She doesn’t move. I push the throttle full forward and hold the helm steady as we drive up the steep face. Emma slides backward toward the front cabin windows out of my line of sight, then the bow soars over the top like a leaping whale, momentarily airborne, and plunges down the back of the wave, flinging me to the side of the cockpit as the hull leans suddenly port.

  I bang my jaw, scramble to stand, get back to the helm. “Emma!” I have a terrible feeling that she coaxed me out here to die. I struggle with the helm to point the nose dead-on into the wave rising higher overhead. “Emma.” I can’t see her in the chaos and darkness. The wave breaks over the cockpit and we are suddenly surfing down its back side into choppy water.

  The dangerous set of breakers behind us, I almost start to relax before my gut contracts into a ball of fear when I don’t see Emma on deck. Grabbing a stay, I stand on the stern rail and search the black water. “Emma! Emma!” Water slaps the hull and the surf behind sounds softer by the second. I race back to the helm, pull the throttle back to a near idle, and jump up on the cabin roof. “Emma!”

  With the moon behind a cloud I can’t see a thing. Peering into the darkness, I hope she’s a good swimmer. Shit. What now? Turn around? Shit. “Emma!” I drop down in the cockpit, put the throttle up, and jerk the helm hard to starboard into a long circle to come around. If I don’t see her, I’ll put the boat back and go for help. “Emma!” You were so sweet, really. Pretty fucked up. But full of potential. You had nowhere to go but up. Dammit. I wa
s trying to help you. And you used me to kill you. How dare you? Looking over my shoulder back at the harbor mouth, straining to see in the darkness, I realize that I’m crying. “Emma!”

  “Baby, you’ll never be the one to save me.”

  Startled, I spin around and see Emma standing by the mast. “Where were you?”

  “Up there under that sail bag.” She jerks her head behind her at the jib bag in the bow.

  “I could kill you!” I shout.

  “You just said you wanted to save me.”

  I smile as Emma unties the main from the mast and draws the sheet through the crank.

  “You’ve sailed before.”

  “A little,” she says. “With my dad.”

  Running with the main, Day Tripper clips along at eight knots. After the storm swells, the bay is pretty smooth, more of a big lake than the perilous Pacific. It’s almost like daylight under the full moon. With Emma beside me in a yellow slicker I feel like an advertisement in a Peter Storm catalog. The half a hit of acid’s tailing off, burned maybe by the adrenaline of the big waves. They used to say that only Thorazine could shut down a trip. I was a Thorazine tadpole for a couple of days. That tranq could shut down a charging rhino. Suddenly I realize that I’m very tired.

  “Coming out of the harbor, that freaky set of big breakers,” I end a calm silence, “I thought about my father telling me not to take my pint-size fishing boat out into the Atlantic. I was thirteen, 1973. South Carolina. He told me to stay in the high-tide inlet between Pawley’s Island and the mainland. I longed to get out into that wide-open space. It was scary out there in the big water. I was never comfortable. I just went for it. Maybe I just wanted to disobey him.”

  Emma listens without the usual faint sardonic curl at the corners of her mouth. Maybe our little adventure will wake her from her junkie stupor, the ocean spray wash away some of her pessimism.

  “Dad didn’t know that I was going out with my little flat-bottomed skiff and one-horsepower outboard a mile or so offshore. Then I started coming back to the beach instead of the inlet, riding over the breakers to the sand right in front of Mom and Dad and Nick, God rest his soul, and Harper, who was tiny at the time. I don’t remember Dad giving me hell. He must have thought it was pointless to try and stop me, just wanted to keep the peace during his two-week break from the grind.”