Seaview

by Toby Olson

  But this was for anyone to see, and for him it was the lines in the air, the gentle and hooked arcs and graceful fadings and dips, that gave him better pleasure. He felt it as a kind of geometry he could trace back to his body, and when things were exactly right, he knew it was an actual aura emanating from him, and in that extension beyond his body he experienced a unique kind of power. At least he thought of it as unique, felt that there was enough difference in it, though he had heard that archers knew of a similar thing. The line would start out in the bundle of hiss that sat in the muscle of his heart, that tangled and self-regulating system of twisted and complex nerves which made the heart go and in turn extended its influence, making his whole body operate.

  After the planning, but before the hit, it was as if the bundle of hiss tensed a little, became a different kind of system and potential. It was as if it became one continuous long nerve coiled in the flesh of his heart. It was as if it unraveled slowly, sending itself like a catheter into a pulmonary artery and from that to the brachial and down into the wrist of his left arm and into his thumb, where it pressed into the grip of the club. And a moment before the club face struck against the ball, and as the ball itself seemed to swell in that way it did, reaching out to the club face to touch it, the visible letters on the Golden Ram sharpening in their outlines, it was as if a small hole opened in the end of his thumb and the tip of the nerve came through and there was a kind of synapse, an electric arcing, between his thumb and the ball, and the arc continued into the air when the ball shot off the etched surface of the club face, and the lines began. It was not an unraveling. It was as if the air were a surface on which the ball could trace and map its path, but it looked like a filament of gold or silver, depending on the place of the sun, and it stayed and marked its arc until the ball had descended and found out its resting place. He felt, at certain special times, that the line was somehow part of his body and that his influence throbbed along the line and was connected to the ball until the shot was finished, when the ball came to rest.

  He moved up to the ball and got slightly down in his stance and addressed it. He had decided on a half eight, a slight punching fade, to take the ball low and left, then bring it back right so that when it hit in the apron it would be coming in on an angle from the left and would have some side spin in it. That

  way it would roll up the hill toward the right back of the green where the pin was. He figured it would stop close and would get them their eagle. He shifted his feet, lifted the club head from the ground, then replaced it, then did that again, sighting his line in, picturing the filament he expected to come this time. Then he brought the club head up in a half backswing, began the slight hip-shift toward the green, brought the club down and through, dug into sand in the crude fairway in front of the place where the ball had been, and the force of the swing brought the club through and up.

  His head was pulled up by his arms; he looked to see how the ball flew and caught sight of it when it was already a good fifty feet from him. Then the line began to materialize, silver this time under the dark cloud cover. The ball, etching the line, reached its apex and then began to descend, turning its arc to the right and in toward the green. But his eyes stopped at the apex, and they widened. There was another line there, this one a dirty white, and it cut across the top of the arc, dividing the air above the fairway from high rough on the left to an equally high place on the right. His concentration broke. He quit watching the ball, got up from his stance, and turned to the others, but he kept his club head in the air and pointed with it.

  “There’s another line,” he said. They did not know what he meant at first, but then Campbell saw it too, and he pointed.

  “There!” he said. And when the others saw it, it was shaking and whipping slightly, and their eyes followed along it to the right, and they saw some rustling in the scrub high up in the rough, the kind of movement a small animal would make or a large bird foraging. But the thing happened too fast for them to judge the movements. The bird leapt up from the brush so quickly it seemed to materialize in the air a few feet above it. Like a great hawk, or an osprey, or an eagle even, it danced and fluttered on stiff wings, and the absence of the glare of sunlight or the backdrop of shadows was such that they could see it very distinctly. It was not a bird at all but a small man with wings. His face was in profile, his chin up and his jaw-set, arrogant, but austere in its stillness. He wore a feathered headdress and fringed shirt and trousers, and in his small right fist he carried a tomahawk. He dipped down a little and then rose quickly as the line connected to him snapped taut. Then they heard the rustle in the paper as the high breeze above the still fairway caught him, sending him higher.

  “There’s the flyer!” Campbell yelled, and their heads jerked to the other side, following the line to where it entered the brush, and they saw only the curve of the back before it disappeared over the hill, the line still taut and the kite climbing higher, quickly, until it was directly above the fairway and very high. They watched as it disappeared into the clouds and the rain that was falling, weighty and a little heavier now, wetting their upturned faces.

  Allen went back to the cart and got his umbrella from the attachment on his bag, opened it, and handed it to Melinda. The Chair had his out already, and he sat in the cart under it, shivering slightly, though it was not so cold, just a little wet.

  “We’ve got to hit up and get out of here,” he said. “We’re taking too much time!” He looked back toward the tee, but there was no one there, no other team, waiting behind them. His voice was still a little raspy and shaky, but he had recovered a little from the events, and he got down, dropped his ball, and struck it quickly, taking no time for a practice swing. His shot was long enough, but off to the left.

  “Come on, Eddie, Campbell, let’s go!” Eddie went over quickly to the place from which Allen and the Chair had hit their balls, dropped his, and hit up also. Campbell seemed not to want to leave his golf bag, but he too went over and hit, then trotted back to the cart and got in. Then the carts started and headed up the fairway toward the green.

  The clatter of the two carts prevented any other noise from reaching them, and it was only when they pulled up and stopped at greenside and the motors wound down that they could hear the distant sounds coming from the direction of the lighthouse and the other side of the course. Melinda thought she could hear a horn of some kind blowing in short blasts. They heard dull thuds, faint and distant, and what they took to be the sounds of voices yelling.

  “This must be it,” Campbell said, and he got down out of the cart and went to his bag in the carrier. The Chair turned and saw him reach into the slit and work at something. When his hand came out and up, he was holding a small semiautomatic rifle.

  “Christ!” Costa said, when he saw it.

  “Now, just a minute!” the Chair squeaked.

  “You: shut the fuck up and stay here,” Campbell said, pointing at the Chair with the short barrel. “This is government business.” And he started toward the left in the direction of the third green, far up the hill. He trotted slowly in a half-crouch, the rifle hanging at the end of his arm vertical to his body.

  Allen could see the flagstick out of the corner of his eye, and he turned a little that way and saw that his ball had ended where he had planned for it to end. The line was in the green, from where the ball had bounced up from the apron in a slowly turning curve to where it now rested, only about three feet from the flagstick and the hole, with an uphill lie and a putt that seemed from where he was to be straight in. He had a physical urge. His body wanted to lift up out of the seat and get down and go over and make the putt, get the ball down for their eagle. It would be easy, and he wanted to get it over with while there was still a chance for it. He needed to close it, to finish the process that he had started at the tee. It would be open-ended otherwise, like the future had been before Melinda’s illness. A good part of the future was buffered because it was circumscribed and contained now. The paramete
rs in which prediction took place were clear and understandable, and he could handle them, like he could handle golf. But the ball was there, and it seemed to throb in the waiting, because its potential was so directed and narrow. It yearned for its death in the hole, and he throbbed and yearned with it. He felt he had to get it soon or he might not get it at all, and if he did not get it it would not just change things and push him out and away from the focus, because there was room at least for some painful stretching, but it would break him: the focus was taut, and he had real fear. He thought of the danger inherent in the system of the Tensegrity Sphere that Melinda had spoken of that day in Aspen. He fought to get out of the cart, and he fought to stay in it at the same time. He heard the sharp intake of breath beside him, turned his head to Melinda, and then looked where she was looking.

  Campbell was halfway to the crest of the hill when the rifle came up and across his body. His right hand grabbed the stock, and as he came to the ground he dug it in in front of him, breaking his fall with butt and elbows, then quickly had the stock to his shoulder and the rifle sighted at the torso of a boy who had appeared, trotting on and over the upper green, coming down the hill toward them. The boy was looking back. His arms hung at his sides as he ran. His canvas workbag bounced and rattled its contents against his right knee. When he turned and saw the prone man with the weapon below him, he pulled up, dropped the bag with a thud to the ground, and raised his arms, his palms elevated and open in front of him. Campbell came up off the ground quickly, his rifle still at the ready, but then Allen saw the release of tension in his shoulder and saw him raise the barrel of the weapon, using it to motion the boy toward him. The boy picked up his bag and began to come down in a half-skip. When he reached Campbell, the man turned and came down the rest of the way with him. They could hear the structure of the boy’s voice, the rhythms in the talking, well before the two reached them.

  “Chip,” Costa said, turning to the Chair as they approached the carts, the boy already in mid-paragraph, his eyes blinking, his skinny body doing its little dance.

  “… and who would imagine such dark power to thwart us? Simple beachgoers, a brink of a sunny day (though some clouds), and the Chipper snatching a few deserved winks up under the truck (a toke or two to soothe him) … Hey, Chair! Hey, Eddie! … then comes Sammy, rapping the running board, and calls him out. With much eye-rubbing and half stagger up from slumber’s appassionato, he and the other lad trot over to see the ladies from cliffside. My, my, naked and two-toned down there! a good four hundred souls to the Chip’s calculations. Warm and dumbstruck I was, though felt a few wet drops to cool me. Magnifico! clean fleshy pleasures! arms alink with Sammy: two jaunty lads just watching. But some (watchamacallit) ritual of sorts going on down there: flappy freedom now and skin beach posters hooked up, and that darkling dangeroo casket for a burial of stuffed pillowed man with Air Force Station uniform on him. Felt a kind of chill, I did. Some people in dressed-up wear, heads atilt and looking up to cliffside from the beach. And then the whales! Chair! and a few souls pointing and dancing, until the beachy masses turned seaward, the Chipper’s eyes, I bet, as big as pumpkins! great bodies aroll and some splashing! It was something, Chair! You seen it Eddie, you an ocean bucko, now and previously, the Chip knows of it …

  “And I am desirous of clear word power now that I have come here to tell you. There were twelve of them to my count, and that is accurate, because I was on the high prominence of the land’s overhanging figure and could see their backs, massive and glistening, when they rose and blew their silver fountains, the sun sparkling the spectrum of colors in them. Half dark over the land it was now, the clouds threatening, but seaward it was shining. The one closest in seemed to be pilot, the pivot on which they made their turning. They came, fanlike, around the lighthouse point, their row uniform, running out from their pilot into the deeper water, some space between them but a pattern in their rise and dive. The massive back of the third one out showed itself like an island, and I could see the city of barnacles and other sea life and caught wood and rigging there, a ruined city: crushed temples, viaducts, remnants of streets and busy squares, streaming riverbeds, benches and cupolas, trellises for the hanging of seaflower shades.

  “The fourth in the line seemed overshadowed by this giant’s size and complexity, and as if to assert its own mastery, its head came up once, and its jaw, encased in a sheath of leather skin, showed itself, and its upper lip curled back, and I could see those yards of heavy white bone as the massive head stood for a moment straight up in the turbulence: a graceful sea-arch and a dark cave entrance. The force of the pilot turning the line seemed to suck water out, and the shore swell pulled back to sea in riptide, and sand bars came up, the small clear pools forming inshore, driving the heavy turbulence out and away from the few bathers, the water flooding away from them, until those up to their necks and bobbing were now no more than ankle deep and gazing seaward, their feet sunk in wet sand. And then the little naked and brown children were jumping up and dancing on the beach, and some were lifted on the shoulders of men and women, and the dolphins came.

  “I picked out three to start with, one to each side of the far whale in the line, and one to his tail, a little back to avoid the hard banging of that fanned mass as it pounded the water down by the ton. Then another came and shot like a new metal barrel from a great depth and sailed in the air high over the back of the largest whale, sliding in on the other side with no splash, as if the water had parted for his entrance.

  “Then there must have been fifty of them, males and females both. They came up in concert, as if a single complex of mind brought them. They formed loops and lines in the air, and they looked like elegant charms on some invisible bracelet of intention. Over and under the whales they went, and I could hear their fluted talking and their racial yells. Some stood on their tails and raced backward no more than ten feet in front of the whales’ heads, then flipped over and dived. And the whales too were talking and making a music, but their sounds were deep and foghorn-like and vibrant, like the largest of organ pipes. The dolphins sounded like piccolos in counterpoint, and it was as if the two languages were of the same root. The line moved along the shore slowly, and the sea was like a giant amphitheater, a massive musical progress taking place on it, clouds of sea birds creating a roof over it, the sea itself the soft stage. The bodies on the beach leaned toward the sea intently, and even the children stopped their movements, and all of the world seemed, for a time, changed …

  “And then comes the Chiefie and his crew! And I am as if zonked at the sight. In a dozen boats and drifting down coast and turning in and dressed in full Injun regalia, the Chiefie standing in a prow, with headdress, face paint, and tomahawk!

  O naked brothers, sisters, children, all jammed in from the sea and seaside cliff as if caught in ambuscade! And the pilot turned the line of whales seaward. It was as if they had prepared the coming of Chief Wingfoot and were now going, and behind them the dolphins fell into files of mimicry. I could no longer see their eyes. They came up, dived, and came up again behind the whales. They moved together, and I felt that they had given up thought then and were totally of a real magic, at one with their body motors, moving with natural and quiet grace toward their better world.

  “But now the Chiefie was pilot, and his Quahog People boat boys were coming stately into the whales’ vacancy. The sea itself had come back in to shore, and old Chiefie’s boats were riding the returning swells. The Injuns began to pop over the gunnels and into the surf, waist deep, and pull the boats to beach. And the naked and dressed folk were moving again, but this time back and against the escarpment below the cliff. Indeed, old Injun visages were doing their number on them as of old. But when they hit the beach, the Chief stayed in the prow pulled up on the sand in surf and pointed to the bucks to head right and left and to turn boats over and get down behind them.

  “And the dear Chipper and his cohort Sammy are watching all this with some intensity of eyeball and head c
onnection, when—oh presage of darkness!—the Chipper hears the roar of horn and motor at his rear, and when he turns—O dear lady in cart!—the twenty or so and dreaded Devil’s Advocates on motorcycles, four abreast, scorching macadam, up to the lighthouse, where the Chip sees now the townie cruisers with gumball lights ablinking and the chubby and local coppers waiting with clubs withdrawn. His eyeballs are affixed there, but he has look enough to see more of the Chiefie’s redskins back of the hill and coming over the eighth fairway, over underground river below ground, creeping up in a line, and the Advocates peeling off before they reach the cruisers and cooking along the rough to the seaside of the sixth, right on toward your humble Chipper and Sam! And Chip’s eyes want a definite closing, for some of the beach folk are over the crest now, and the Advocates coming along it, driving them back, and hitting into a few, set aroll with bruises and sand scrapes. A woman is clipped head on and carried, with flabbergasted Advocate and motorcycle all in a slow twisting, over cliff and down to scatter souls struggling up, and the woman staggering to foothold on the scarpside sand to rap Advocate soundly with straw basket on groggy noggin.

  “And mucho yelling and down-coast movement from the coppers at the cruisers then. And back to the left, on clubhouse road, I see three khaki jeeps and the troop truck coming, see Injuns hunkering down and digging in for action … Oh, oh scheiss! grab the bag handle and skitter away, Sammy and Chipper running to the sixth tee and over the shoulder catch old townie constables hot on Advocates’ heels, some stopping to aid Skin Beachers, others running in pursuit with clubs waving, and behind them, the troop truck unloading, Injuns and Air Force boys in standoff, and the press corps arriving with wheel screech and old war horse photographers jumping out and already snapping. And then, the Devil’s Advocates’ air flyers acomin’! Dark and shadow-laden bike boys hanging from huge rigid wings and drifting high out over the sea, coming around lighthouse promontory point, such monstrous birds! and dipping slowly down from the sky and approaching cliffside, heading our way. And the Chipper then has quick and acute recognition of the Advocates’ diversionary ploy. Their motorcycle force turns into the sixth fairway, forms wagon-train circle, chains and clubs revealed now, waiting the coppers’ coming, while the flyers drift, free and unopposed, along the escarpment, bringing the promise of yet more chaos!