Terminal Island

by Walter Greatshell

  After they’ve showered and changed, Henry and Ruby ask the desk clerk at the Formosa about the address he has for his mother. It is in a letter he received some months ago from an acquaintance of his mom’s—an elderly neighbor who he thinks was probably her only friend in recent years. The handwritten letter reads:

  Dear Mr. Cadmus,

  I am a friend of your mother’s. Some weeks ago she was very excited to tell me she had a wonderful opportunity to move to a condominium on Catalina Island, and asked me to forward her mail to this address: Box 327B, Shady Isle, Avalon Township, Los Angeles CA. She promised to contact me as soon as she arrived, but I have not heard back from her. Since her health is poor, I would be grateful to know if you have heard from her, and if she is well. I know from speaking to your mother that you and she are not on the best of terms, but I hope you can reassure me that she is all right. She is a remarkable woman, and has always spoken highly of you and your family. Thank you.

  Sincerely—Lucille Sanford

  After receiving this letter, Henry had written his mother at once, alarmed to hear of this latest likely debacle:

  Mom,

  I just heard from your friend Lucille that you’ve moved to Catalina—what’s going on? Have you won the Lotto or something? You’ve got everybody worried—please fill me in on your situation ASAP so I know you’re okay. Ruby and Moxie say hi.

  XXXOOO—Henry

  When a month passed with no reply, Henry decided to try the local Sheriff’s Department instead. Their reply was succinct:

  Mr. Cadmus,

  Regarding your inquiry about your mother, it may help you to know that many of our residents place a high value on their privacy—it is the chief attraction of an island lifestyle.

  Cordially—Sheriff’s Deputy Tina Myrtessa

  Island lifestyle? Gee thanks, officer. Yeah, that was it; he just could see his mother burning up the tennis court, or bicycling all day and dancing all night like the seniors on those adult diaper commercials. Obviously Deputy Myrtessa didn’t know his mother. At least it proved she was still there, though, and not homeless somewhere. Ticked off maybe, but all right.

  Over the following months Henry sent several more letters, his tone becoming increasingly urgent and annoyed by her failure to reply. The last straw was when his last letter came back marked RETURN TO SENDER—what, she wasn’t even accepting his mail now?

  That was it: Like it or not, he had to consider actually going there to find out what the hell she thought she was doing. Had she gone senile? Joined a cult? Shacked up with someone? Part of him doesn’t want to know, would have been so content just to let his mother vanish off the face of the Earth and take his past with her. That’s what she’s become to him: a relic of his personal history, sole repository of unwanted memories. A burden. Plus there was that other thing—the whole Catalina thing. Why did she have to move back there of all places?

  With no regard for disrupting their busy routines or the amount of traveling and expense involved—starting with round-trip airfare from Chicago to L.A.—Ruby had decided it for him:

  Oh, we have to go. That’s all there is to it.

  The tanned, sarong-wearing desk girl at the Formosa squints at the address and says, “Gosh, I’m not sure…” Then she brightens: “Shady Isle. You know what? I think this is that new condo development around the other side of the Casino. You just have to follow the shore road all the way around the point and go up the hill.”

  “Is it close enough to walk?”

  “Oh, sure. I mean, if you don’t mind a little hike. It’s just outside of town.”

  Ruby asks, “You think we can make it there and back before dark?”

  “Oh yeah—no prob.” The girl snaps her fingers. “Hey, if you guys want us to watch your daughter for a while, we can do it—we do childcare at competitive rates. We’re state certified.” She hands them a business card. “Or if you ever want to like go out for the evening? Have a little romantic honeymoon? A lot of the guests like it. My granny’s so great with kids.”

  “Thanks. We’ll have to take you up on that some other night.”

  “Any time, just let me know.”

  Out front, Henry says, “It’s getting kind of late. Maybe we should wait ’til the morning.”

  “No way. I can feel you stewing about it, and it’s ruining my vacation. Let’s get this over with before you have a coronary.”

  “Sorry. You’re right, I’m just procrastinating.” He takes a deep breath as if preparing for a high-dive. “Okay, let’s do it.”

  “Hey, I just want you to be able to relax. I love you, you know.”

  “I love you, too. Thanks for helping me deal with all this.”

  “What’s a good wife for?”

  They push the stroller along the crescent waterfront, following the sidewalk away from the business district toward the northern tip of the bay: the stone jetty and the domineering red-roofed fortress of the Casino Ballroom.

  “It’s not an actual casino,” Henry says. “I don’t know why they call it that. There’s no ballroom either, as far as I know. It’s always just been a movie theater and concert hall. I must have seen The Golden Voyage of Sinbad at least ten times there.” Impulsively, he says, “Hey, maybe we should go to the movies while we’re here.”

  “With Moxie?” Ruby says. “I don’t think so. You remember the last movie we tried to take her to?”

  Henry shudders. “No, you’re right. Too bad.”

  “Sorry, honey. We’ll go again when she’s away at college.”

  The Casino is closed anyway, dark and shut up. There is a flyer on the window advertising an upcoming town meeting. They walk out to a sea wall overlooking the choppy open ocean, the water midnight blue and falling away sharply to bottomless depths. As a kid, Henry marveled at scuba classes going in here, heedless of sharks, boulders, icy currents, or dense kelp—he’s not so sure anymore he’d want to try it. You could vanish down there and never be found. Anything could be lurking down there in the dark—he has a bit of a phobia about it.

  Between the Casino and the stone jetty there is a plaza with coin-operated telescopes. A few other couples have come here to enjoy the late afternoon sun before it sinks behind the island. The rest of Avalon is already in shadow. Ruby sets Moxie free to run around, but as they stand enjoying the view there is a disturbance, a harsh ripping sound from the road. It gets louder and its source appears: a yellow all-terrain vehicle ridden by two men, charging onto the square.

  “Whoa,” says Henry.

  Ruby calls, “Moxie! Stay by us, honey.”

  The burping quad ATV does a donut in the middle of the patio and stops, revving its engine. One of the riders gets off and examines the motor as the other keeps revving, the two of them conferring together over the noise. “I don’t like that sound,” the driver says.

  “Yeah, we don’t, either,” Ruby mutters.

  The men obviously aren’t tourists. They’re dressed in grease-stained overalls and scuffed work boots that clash with the magazine-pretty surroundings like a blue-collar reality check. Henry feels an odd pang of envy at the sight of them—they don’t give a shit about anything.

  “Hold on a second, honey,” he says to his wife, and starts walking over.

  Both men have the grizzled, sun-seasoned look of hardened grunt workers; roadies or even carnies, all wiry, tattooed muscle. They blandly look up as Henry approaches.

  “Hey. Nice ATV,” he says.

  “Yeah, she’s a beaut,” the driver replies amiably. “Just trying to figure out why she’s doing that—you hear that?” He guns the engine.

  Henry can’t hear a thing. Nodding sagely, he says, “I bet it’s perfect for the terrain around here.”

  “Oh yeah. Best thing in the world for hunting.”

  “Hunting, really?”

  “Hell, yes. Best big-game hunting you ever saw on this island. Do you hunt?”

  Henry feels compelled to exaggerate: He once had a BB gun and plinked
bottles and lizards. Other than that, the only shooting he’s ever done was in the Marines—at things that shot back. “A little bit when I was a kid.”

  “Well, the way we do it is you flush a pig into the open, give chase, and stick ’em with a javelin on the fly—why do you think the Mexicans call ’em javelinas? Greatest fuckin’ sport in the world.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Hell, yes. We don’t fuck around. The traditional way to do it is from horseback—these wild hogs can tear you up good if you’re down on their level, and a javelin doesn’t drop ’em like a gun. But this is almost as good as a horse. It’s hog heaven up there, dude. I almost never buy meat. Just last weekend me and him run down a big ol’ papa boar back up in the arroyo seco—had tusks this big, I swear.”

  “No kidding. Wow.”

  “Yeah—even gutted and skinned, the carcass weighed out at two hundred eighty-eight pounds. We had us a hell of a barbeque, didn’t we?” The other, larger man doesn’t smile. His sunburnt forearm is crudely tattooed with a buffalo head.

  Henry asks, “Do you need a permit for that?”

  “For hunting? Not if they don’t catch you.” He nudges Henry in the ribs. “Nah. Where you from, brother?”

  “Uh, well, I live in the Midwest now, but I grew up in L.A. I actually lived here on the island for a little while when I was a kid. This is my first time back.”

  “No shit. So that kind of makes you an islander, huh?”

  “Sort of, I guess. I’m actually here to look up my mother. That reminds me—” he digs for the address “—maybe you guys can help me out. Do you know where this is? Shady Isle?”

  They scrutinize the letter. “Well sure. All you gotta do is keep right on following this road here past the Casino. About a third of a mile down you’re gonna see a steep driveway on your left—just follow that right on up to the top. You can’t miss it.”

  “Thanks guys. Well, I guess we better head off before it gets dark. Nice machine.”

  As he turns away, the man says, “You ever ride one?”

  Henry hesitates. “What, one of these? Not really.”

  “Come on, did you or didn’t you?”

  “Just once, years ago, at Pismo Beach. But it was a three-wheeler.”

  “Well hey,” the driver says, climbing off, “give ’er a spin.”

  Henry tries to make light: “Oh, yeah. That’d be good.”

  “Why not? Go ahead.”

  “I couldn’t.”

  “Sure you could. Why the hell not?”

  “I’d probably wreck it or something.”

  “Wreck it? You’re not gonna wreck it—a ten-year-old could handle this. Trust me, this mother’s been through a lot worse than anything you might do. Nothing you can do to wreck it. Come on.”

  “Thanks anyway—I better not.”

  “Come on, man, try it out. Just once around the square. What’s the big deal?”

  Henry wavers before the force of the man’s insistence—there is something challenging about it, almost hostile: Let’s embarrass the stupid tourist. To them he must appear so useless and soft, but there was a time not so long ago when Henry would have jumped at the chance to show off. Before the car accident. Before his daughter was born. But now he pictures himself putt-putting around like an overcautious idiot, or the opposite: turning a little too fast and flipping the thing over, ending this trip with a broken back, paralyzed for life.

  “No, thanks—the wife would kill me. Besides, we really have to go. Thanks anyway, though.” He waves and gets away.

  “What was that all about?” Ruby asks.

  “Just shooting the bull,” he says, feeling them still watching, like a drill in the back of his skull. “Let’s go.”

  Chapter Seven

  BIG GAME

  They walk past the Casino and down along the shore, the steep mountainside rising on their left. The place has the feeling of being beyond the tourist itinerary; there is little to see here, and no one to see it. The sidewalk peters out to a gravel path overhung with rustling eucalyptus trees. The thin, rocky beach is unkempt and littered with leaves. No one would ever come here to swim.

  It’s getting hard to push the stroller, but just as they begin to think about turning back, they come to the end of the road. The only way remaining is a cleared trail up the hill, barred with a sign that reads, PRIVATE PROPERTY—TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED.

  “That can’t be it,” Henry says.

  “It has to be, it’s all there is,” says Ruby. “Look, I can see it up there.”

  She’s right. Above them, visible through the tree branches, Henry can make out a ledge of snow-white concrete jutting from the brushy cliff.

  “Give me a break—this can’t be the only way up there.”

  “It must just be the beach path.”

  “This is ridiculous.”

  Henry and Ruby pick up the stroller with practiced ease, carrying it between them like a litter as Moxie sleeps within, oblivious. Priding themselves on being active people, they have a system for everything and are used to doing this on stairs, escalators and other urban obstacles—it’s become almost automatic.

  The pathway is hard-packed sand under a mulch of bark and curly brown eucalyptus leaves, cut through here and there with dry flood channels revealing veins of stones. It climbs steeply uphill, veering around rock faces and deadfalls. They lose sight of the ocean. On either side, the slope is all thick desert scrub—not the attractive sword plants and palm trees planted around Avalon, but prickly native brambles and tumbleweeds that remind Henry of the scraggly hills around Hollywood, or maybe Kabul.

  The deeper in they go, the more they are losing the light, and the warmth. Late-afternoon shadows and sea mist are enveloping the trail like a rising tide. These September nights are turning chilly.

  Oddly enough, the sky is still blue above the trees, the clouds foiled with gorgeous sunset colors. On the opposite side of the island it must still be bright and sunny. Unfortunately, they are on the shady side, looking up at daylight as if from a dark hollow. The light is an inducement to keep climbing.

  “We must be almost there,” Henry says, becoming winded.

  “Yeah, this is a little bit more of a hike than I expected.”

  “Sorry, hon.”

  “Hey, it’s my fault—it was my idea.”

  “Yeah, but it’s my mother.”

  “I just hope she has some iced tea when we get there.”

  “And a bathroom.”

  “And a spare bed.”

  “Now you’re going too far.”

  They summit a final slope and all at once emerge onto a freshly-paved road bordered with grass. The new road appears from somewhere inland, following the shoulder of the mountain, and intersects with their dirt path to disappear behind a high metal gate. Over this barrier Henry can see roofs of luxury condos stacked like rice paddies up and down the cliff. The first lights of the evening are beginning to come on.

  “Jackpot,” Henry says, setting down the stroller. “Phew. It’s about damn time.”

  Ruby gets out her camera and starts shooting as they wheel the stroller up to the entrance. The civilized terrain is a pleasure. Posted on the fence next to the closed gate is a sign:

  Shady Isle Visitors Policy: All visitors to Shady Isle Villas must either be signed onto the grounds by a current resident or pre-approved by prior appointment with Shady Isle Management. Admission is at the discretion of Shady Island Management. No solicitors.

  “Such a friendly place,” Henry says.

  “I thought you loved these places.”

  “What places?”

  “These fancy gated communities.”

  “Yeah, well, they’re safe.”

  The gate is locked. Standing before the high privacy fence, Henry can’t see anything or anyone to appeal to, no intercom or guard post. Open sesame, he thinks. Surely there must be a hidden security camera, or motion sensors. Someone will probably be coming any second. He wonders
how his mother gets around here, she who hasn’t had a car in twenty years. They must have some kind of van service.

  The place is dead quiet, no sound of anyone approaching.

  “This has got to be wrong,” he says, shaking his head. “I just can’t imagine what she’d be doing living here. It’s way too expensive.”

  “Hello?” Ruby calls through the gate. “Hello? Anybody home?”

  After a few minutes of no response, Henry says, “Nah. It’s ridiculous that they don’t have a buzzer of some kind…”

  “I know. How can they not have a guard on duty? How do delivery people get in and out?”

  “It must be one of those systems where the residents get an electronic key, a remote control thing like a garage door opener.” So much for visiting his mother. Guiltily tempted by the possibility of another day’s reprieve, Henry sighs, “Well, what do you want to do?”

  “I don’t know. Wait a while longer, I guess. Eventually somebody’s got to come along who can open this gate. Visitor’s Policy or not, we’re going in. No way I came all this way for nothing.”

  They wait for ten minutes, twenty minutes, a half hour, as it gets fully dark and all the automatic lights of the complex come on. Periodically, Ruby shoots a few minutes of footage, just to illustrate the time lapse.

  “This is getting absurd,” she says, watching the playback on her tiny LCD screen. “I knew we started out too late. We’re losing the light.” Abruptly she stands up and shouts, “HEY! SOMEBODY! COME AND OPEN THE GATE!”

  Moxie awakens with a start, crying.

  “Shh! Jesus!” Henry says to his wife. “You’re gonna have them calling the cops on us.”

  “Good. Let them. I’m sorry, but I’m really getting pissed off. How can they just leave people out here like this? We have a baby!” She rattles the gate. “LET US IN!”

  “Calm down. Let’s just go, it’s stupid. These fogies are all inside having dinner. We’ll call the condo office in the morning. That’s what we should have done in the first place.”