Seaview

by Toby Olson

  They stopped their carts near Allen’s ball, and then they looked up at the object. Christ, a second time—it’s like that pole in Tucson, Allen thought, and felt colder when he thought it. But it was not like the pole, though it was tall, maybe twelve feet high, and roughly cylindrical in its vertical axes. It was organic and muscular looking. It was made mostly of wood, some hewn and some gathered. The spire that was its central core was a tree trunk which had been stripped of its bark and limbs until it was bare and blond, tapering and slightly twisted halfway up.

  On the part of its lower surface that was visible above the scrub hiding its base, it was imbedded with shells: sea and razor clams, mussels, blue points, and cherrystones. The shells were inserted carefully in the wood, in a pattern that was suggested but very complex and unclear. It could have been a kind of writing or a series of symbolic markings. The shells were set close together, though with space between them, and the blond wood showed through in contrast, outlining the figures of the shells in relief. Most of the shells were clean and smooth, but the oyster shells among them were sharp and threatening.

  Halfway up the obelisk, and affixed partly to a crosspiece near its top, was the lower mandible of a large shark, pointing downward. The crosspiece was made of two-by-four pine pinioned with galvanized bolts to the tree trunk at its center. Near the ends of the crosspiece, the joints in the jaw had been attached through cleanly drilled holes with thick pieces of silver wire. Three feet below the crosspiece, where the front of the jaw had met the lip at the front of the shark’s vicious snout, it was attached with heavy-gauge blond fishline. The jaw faced out at them as if they were inside the shark’s mouth, looking upward. The teeth had been removed, and where they had been, and carefully selected for graduated size and shape, the upper shells of quahogs had been inserted so skillfully that the shells looked like the natural teeth of the shark, but more even and more colorful, turning the imagined shark into an instrument not for ripping but for crushing, the color in the shells turning it into some magnificent mutant.

  Melinda saw it could be thought of as beautiful, and she could not look away from it. Allen couldn’t look away from it either, but he could not see beyond its presence to any judgment about it. Art Campbell moved to his bag on the back of the cart, unzipped its vertical side pocket, and adjusted something in it. The Chair made a strange sound when he saw what was above the jaw and the crosspiece. Were it not that a golf glove had been sewn into the end of the limp sleeve, the wrist hung over the edge of the crosspiece and affixed there with a long nail so that the glove dangled over the wood, he might not have recognized his green slicker, the one the woman had ridden away with on the bus. The collar of the slicker was draped over the top end of the trunk above the jaw, another nail holding it there. It hung down slack behind, the tip of its zipper just visible below the crosspiece. It hung very still in the absence of breeze.

  “Get it down, get it down,” the Chair said, his voice just above a whisper, and he stepped into the cart and fell into the seat. Nobody moved at first, but then Eddie Costa started, limping a little, favoring his left leg and bent over. Allen and Melinda noticed what they had not seen before, when he was able to stand straight, that there was some slight deformity in his back. As he got on his knees and bent down to his golf bag, which he had placed on the ground of the fairway, they could see the rise like the bulge of a small dolphin running down from his collar to the middle of his back, his jacket stretching tight over it as he opened the zipper compartment of his bag. The sky was dark, and where Costa knelt, surrounded by the two carts, the darkness was even deeper. But though there was no discernible sunlight at all now, the quahog shells in the shark’s jaw and the emblems of the shells below it were reflecting, and they cast light, a kind of vague aura, a rough circle of beams on the ground where Costa knelt. He noticed it and glanced up, and his eyes gleamed in it for a moment before he looked away and down.

  He reached into his bag, but he seemed tentative and uncertain. The first thing he took out was a dark and richly colored Paisley shawl, and he spread it on the ground beside the bag. Then he started to take various objects out, searching. He placed them carefully in rows on the square of the shawl as he removed them from the bag. With each thing removed, he had to reach into the zipper compartment deeper to get the next. Soon he was in up to the elbow, still searching. They all watched the objects accumulate. Near the end he was getting desperate, hesitating each time he reached in. The beams of light, now seeming to come from some source in the shell teeth themselves, grew brighter and slightly red around the shawl and the man digging in the bag as the sky continued to darken. He was in up to his shoulder. They could see his hand hitting against the vinyl, like some small animal in the pouch, as he searched, still on his knees, his cheek pressed into the zipper of the slit, his eyes closed. Then he withdrew his arm and sat back on his haunches, bent over, his arms hanging, his hands in the rough fairway grass. Where his cheek had pressed the zipper there was a line like a red scar running from his eye to the corner of his mouth. He seemed to snarl and whimper at the same time. He cocked his head, almost sheepishly, glancing up at the fixed smile on the jaw. Then he lay out flat on the ground, opened the bag’s slit, grasping the zipper on either side, and put his arms and head into it and began to inch forward. Their mouths were open as they watched him go in.

  “Get my ankle!” they heard his urgent, muffled voice in the pouch. The Chair slid from his seat, circled the carts, and moved in behind him. He got down on his knees and reached out and took Costa’s right ankle in both hands, keeping his arms extended, his body as far away from the man in the bag as he could get it. There was a slight jerk, and the hump slipped into the slit. He was in the bag now almost up to his waist. There were rumblings like thunder coming from over the hill and the other side of the course. When he was in the bag as far as he could go, he stopped moving, and the Chair somehow knew that it was time to pull back. It took effort, the body seemed to fight against withdrawal, but it came slowly out as the Chair pulled at the leg, urging the breach. Finally, the hump popped out, and then the shoulders, turning, and then the head. The head turned back, as red as a newborn, and looked at the Chair intently.

  “Keep pulling,” Costa hissed. The Chair pulled, and Costa’s arms came out, and then his hands, and held tight in them he had the end of a braided rope, and it uncoiled as it came like a length of placenta. When he was out, he rolled over on his back, his body bowed because of the bulk of the hump under him, his chin extended, his chest heaving as he sucked for air. He jerked his left foot, and the Chair released his ankle and fell back on his haunches. Melinda sat in the cart watching, her hands crossed over her chest. It was clear to all of them that they had to wait for Costa to come to himself again, and while they waited and listened to his gasping, they gazed at the shawl and the objects that covered it, starting at the upper corner. Somehow, it seemed proper to read it from left to right, and then down, as if it were a manuscript, wampum, or some other written message.

  The first row contained a small carved wooden whale, a matchbook with Richardson’s Funeral Home printed in gold letters on a deep blue-felt background across its surface, a crumpled and faded post card with a picture on it, a moonstone medallion, a snakeskin wallet, a baby’s rattle, and a small wire loop, like a garrote, that obviously had something to do with fishing. In row two: a spool of fishline, an oyster shell, a packet of Red Man chewing tobacco, a lure, a white plastic barrette, a bag of peanuts, a small Diamond matchbox, a hemostat, a plastic bag full of rotten blueberries, a bird whistle. The third row: a small stuffed bird, a curved Kelly clamp, a red-checked bandanna, a little silver spoon, a gutting knife with a scrimshaw handle in a tooled leather sheath, a book of shadow signs, a black-lacquered thumbtack, a dolphin ring. And in the last row: a small dark bottle, a syringe in a plastic tube, a silver thimble, a golf glove, a razor blade, a plastic paperweight with a blue flower in its center, a piece of wooden doweling, a coil of thin wire, four sma
ll charms on a ring (three human figures and a putter), and a glass sliver of moon.

  It all meant nothing they could have agreed upon, but what it meant to each of them displayed itself in posture and movement. Campbell got closer to the back of the cart and put his hand on the open mouth of his golf bag. Allen shifted in his seat and looked over to where his ball had come to rest and its line into the green. The Chair looked back at the spire and the shark’s jaw, then back at his soiled knees, and shuddered. Melinda breathed through her parted lips, sucking in air like Costa, and continued to stare at the shawl. Then, gaining sufficient breath, Costa rolled slowly over onto his stomach, put his palms on the ground, and pushed back up to a kneel. He reached back by his foot, grasped the end of the braided rope, and pulled it forward to his knee. He flicked his wrist, rolling a loop across his forearm and catching it in his other hand. He leaned back on his haunches and thrust his arms out in front of him, palms up, the three-foot braid that sagged in the middle held at arms’ length and offered to the Chair. The Chair shrank back in his seat in the cart, pushing in the air in front of his body, and shook his head.

  “You do it, Eddie.”

  Looking at him, and with arms still extended, Costa did a strange turn with his hands and wrists, bringing them together in slow trick. When his hands came apart again there was a small nooselike loop tied in the rope. He rolled back on his heels and pushed forward again, coming to his feet, then limped to the back of the Chair’s golf cart and, using the little noose, tied the rope around the bumper. The Chair craned around in the seat to watch him, and when Costa finished with the tying, he rose up from the back and looked again at him.

  “The rest is yours,” Costa said. The Chair got down out of the cart then, slowly, but with some resolve.

  “Give me the fucking thing, give it to me!” he said, and Costa handed him the end of the rope. He took it and looked up at the spire briefly, then headed toward it up the side hill of the rough. The others watched him and did not see Eddie Costa gathering the objects in the Paisley shawl, shoving them back into the slit in his golf bag.

  The Chair climbed awkwardly, slipping back at times, grabbing at tufts of scrub for purchase. When he reached the base of the odd cross, he was careful not to touch it. He took the rope in his left hand, held the end of it in his right, a good length of braid between them. His first cast missed the mark, and he had to do it again. On the second throw the end dropped through the half ring of the shark’s jaw, sliding between two of the bottom shell teeth. He played the rope up, the weight of it moving the end down toward him. He was close to the spire, and he had to force his head back on his shoulders to see what he was doing. From where the others were, the perspective seemed to put him almost under the shark’s jaw, and it looked as if he were offering his vulnerable neck to it in some ritual of acceptance. The rope’s end seemed to avoid his fingers as he reached up to it, and only after what seemed a long time did he get a hold of it. As quick as he could he tied it, and then he backed down the hill awkwardly, keeping his eyes on the jaw.

  When he got to the surface of the fairway, he turned and headed back to his cart, waving Campbell away from it with an impatient gesture. Campbell lingered near his bag, and he had to jump clear when the Chair put the cart in reverse, jammed at the gas pedal, and twisted the wheel to get it to turn in a tight little circle so that it faced away from the side hill and the spire. Then he drove it forward to the other side of the fairway, slowly, until the braid lifted up off the ground and became taut. He had his left arm back over the seat of the cart, his head turned, watching the spire. A few heavy drops of rain fell, spotting his knit shirt at his biceps. The sky was very dark now, and the only strong light was in the aura around the spire, the polished shells softly gleaming. He pulled forward, and the jaw seemed to vibrate. They could all hear a kind of humming coming from the taut rope, and the Chair could feel it in his body and in the cart. Then the back wheels of the cart began to turn slowly, guttering down into the fairway earth, throwing up sand and tufts of grass. The spire held. The Chair threw the cart into reverse and moved it back a few yards. Then he raced it forward, snapping the rope up from the fairway this time. When he reached the end of his tether, his head snapped back, the wheels guttered deeper, and the front end of the cart came up like a bucking horse a good three feet off the ground. The spire shook, and two shells spun out of the shark’s jaw, but it held again.

  Allen and Melinda watched what was happening in the darkening day. Had they been able to step away from it, it might have been funny, at least in some way ironic in its incongruity and inappropriateness. As it was, it was purely mad. They watched the spire shaking and holding, the Jenny Lind tower above it dark and very stationary, the cut windows in its stone like vacant eyes. The deep groin of the fairway was exaggerated in its depth by the darkness. The slopes of the rough on either side seemed to press in and down on them. They thought they could hear sounds—heavy implosive thuds, motors, kinds of cracking, unidentifiable—over the hills toward the sea, but they were not sure of them. The overriding sound was that of the whine of the cart as it moved and jerked. The Chair moved it back and forth. He raced up the fairway and down it. He headed again across it. He tried various angles of pull. The cart wheels were hot and smoking, and they could smell rubber burning and oil in the air. Twice, the cart came close to flipping on its side, but with unexpected nimbleness, and like a sailor leaning over the gunnels of a small skiff to keep it righted, the Chair thrust his body half out of the cart, using his weight to keep it down, holding the steering wheel, his feet hitting the pedal.

  The braid kept falling slack and then leaping up, taut and humming, from the fairway. The spire held, but then, very suddenly, it stopped holding. The Chair was trying the cross fairway attack again, his body hunched down and ready for the violent jerk. When he reached the end of the rope, there was a sharp crack, like the splitting of a large rock, and the rope broke. The cart raced across the fairway and halfway up the hill into the rough on the far side. When it went as far as its momentum and power could take it, it turned in a tight circle and came to rest, its nose butted up against a small pine. They had all watched it go up and were looking that way, but then they heard the sound behind them and turned to where the Chair was looking from where he sat with his chest against the wheel up in the rough, and they saw the spire slowly falling toward them.

  Though it was over forty feet away, they each shrank back a little as it tipped. The arms of the slicker waved disjointedly, and its body billowed out with air. The golf glove flicked its fingers on the wood of the crosspiece. The changing perspective in the fall made the shark jaw seem to broaden its smile into a grin. The wood sighed, and shell teeth began to fly out of the mouth, turning and spinning in the air. Then the spire was perpendicular to the line of their vision, and they could not see its complexity. When it hit and disappeared in the side hill scrub, there was little sound.

  The Chair brought the cart down out of the rough, the trailing braid wiggling and ascending like a massive decapitated snake up toward where the cart had been; the tip disappeared into the scrub and went up to where it was looped around the pine. He stopped the cart alongside Allen and Melinda’s, and Costa spoke to him.

  “Do you want that fucking slicker?” The Chair could not speak for a moment, but he shook his head.

  “I got what I wanted,” he finally said. “Now let’s finish this hole!”

  Only Allen knew immediately what the Chair meant. Campbell and Costa seemed a little bewildered, as if they had forgotten why they were there, in golf carts, halfway down a fairway. Melinda was already, in her different nature, slightly separated from any events. Allen stepped out of the cart, and as none of the others moved, he spoke.

  “Okay, I’ll hit then.” He walked over to where his ball was, stood back ten feet behind it, sighting along the line. Because there was no other movement, the others watched him.

  The ball sat five feet down from the entrance into the
rough running along the fairway toward the green. It was on the flat, and he would have a good place for a stance. He was about a hundred and sixty-five yards from the front of the second green; the pin stood twenty-five or so feet back to the right and on the high side of the slope. He figured he could go straight at the pin with a wedge, get it to bite and pull up quick. The green had begun to glisten; the rain, though the drops were still infrequent and far apart, was steady now and real. The drops were large, and he figured that the green had softened a little already. The shot gave him nothing interesting to negotiate. He turned and went back to the cart, grabbed the head of his eight-iron, and pulled the club free of the bag. When he got behind the ball again, he looked up the groin of the slowly dampening fairway and thought about the lines.

  The lines were best when they arced. There were lines in the air and lines on the ground. The lines on the green were visible to anyone when it rained. You could retrace the putt after it was finished then. The ball would make a kind of trough, pushing the drops to either side in its roll and bending the wet grass down before it. When the rain had been heavy, a small rooster tail of water would rise up behind it, and as the tail shrank the ball would slow in its pace, and when it stopped the tail would stop. And then there would be a trail like a snake left behind when it had passed through sand. You could see every detail of the breaks the ball had negotiated, how it had fought against them or rolled comfortably with them when the pace was right, taking it to finish somewhere near the hole or in it. If you watched long enough, the trail would begin to disappear as the grass rose up again in the trough and the rain fell. It would leave the surface of the green in increments, starting from where the head of the putter had rested, the end of its tail becoming faint and slowly vanishing as you looked up it toward the hole or the final resting place of the ball near it. It could be almost as if the movement of your eye along the line registered and then canceled it, until, when your glance reached the presence of the ball or the absent place in the green where the hole was, there was no longer any use for the line, and it was gone.