by Alex Austin
“We lived in a city then,” Jean continued. “And there was a church just down the street from our house. One of those white wooden churches. Sygen always used to tell me it looked more like a hen house than a place where God would spend the afternoon.” He paused. A gull screamed. She turned, startled by the cry, saw the bird soar swiftly past low clouds. He went on as she tried to follow the bird even after she could no longer see it. “Well, on that Sunday morning,” he said, “we were all gathered in my father’s room to watch him die. We were too small to know what death was, but we knew it was important. He seemed about gone. They talked that way, as if it were already over. I remember that. I could hear him trying to breathe, and it sounded as if his insides were rotten and full of holes like an old tire tube. We just stood there, waiting. I wondered if we were all going to die on that same afternoon, the way we’d all go on a picnic together or to the doctor or sit down to dinner.
“They let me stand close to the bed so he could reach out and touch me if he wanted to. I remember I was so terribly afraid of him touching me. I stood there trembling, not knowing when his hand would reach out, trying to hold my breath. And then when he did finally touch my head, his hand was so light, so gentle, I remember I smiled. I thought if his hand could be so gentle, death must be good. It was as if a bird had set down on my head. It lasted only an instant, but at times, even now, I still feel his hand. It becomes the wind or rain when I walk in it or even a pillow when I lie down in the dark.
“I don’t think I ever really knew how much I loved that poor man until he touched me that day. . . .” Jean paused again, was silent a longer time, seemed to be confused, but then he smiled in a sad way that made Miss Smith want to reach out to touch him, but she held her hand back, touching the fingers together, fearing perhaps he would feel his old father’s hand in this blind dream of his.
“But then the churchbells started to ring,” Jean continued. “They were loud, very loud bells. You could hear them, I’m sure, miles away. They started to toll and my father opened his eyes, sat up a little in his bed, and in a voice much stronger than any I had ever heard come out of him, he said, ‘Can’t they stop those infernal bells so I can at least die in peace!’ And do you know, the minute he said this, the bells did stop. They really stopped. Everyone was amazed, because usually they kept on ringing for a much longer time. And as soon as they stopped, my father lay back in bed with a calm smile on his face and he died.” He paused again. Miss Smith sat beside him on the gray blanket she had brought from her room, and she watched him carefully, waited for him to go on.
“It’s such a strange thing,” Jean said. “I don’t think my father was ever a happy man. He always seemed like a man who had been born into the wrong world and his entire life had been spent in trying to hide this fact from others. But he died happy. When those bells stopped ringing, it was as if the whole world had suddenly realized it had to obey him, had to know finally who he was. Sometimes I like to think that if a man can die happy the way my father did, then that somehow makes all the rest of his life happy. I don’t know . . .” He shook his head, the lost years deep as seas, so you could never see to the bottom of them even if once you were there to walk that strange land.
She waited for him to go on. She thought there would be much more. Sometimes she felt as if she could tell her own life in a sentence, all of it, even though she had no idea what that one sentence would have to say. But when he remained silent, she said, “But why does your mother talk always of this sea captain?”
This too, he knew, was of the lost time, but his blindness had long accustomed him to such loss; he could see backward more clearly for not being able to see his own fingers in front of him. The smile was only for her, the way some smiles are for children on certain days. He reached over for her hand, brushing empty sand first, and as he did this, she took his hand quickly, pressed it with joy and hunger to her breast, as if it were an unexpected gift. She said, “Jean,” softly, his name a secret in how she said it.
He said, “Who knows? Perhaps she’s just a little mad. Or perhaps that’s really how she saw him, my father. Love, from what I’ve heard, makes people see some very strange things.”
“It does,” she said. Sne had, for days, been afraid to ask him if he loved his sister.
“As far as love goes, I’m probably no blinder than anyone else,” he said.
She leaned over, kissed his mouth. Then she moved in closer to him, pulling the edge of blanket around her legs. She pushed her shoes off, felt the cold sand through the toes of her stockings.
“But I can’t really be blind,” Jean said. “Because I know you’re beautiful. I know the color of the sky only because Sygen’s told me it’s blue or sometimes gray when there’s rain. But then, I don’t even know what blue is. I know the world mostly from what she tells me about it. Even my own face—I know what I look like only from what she’s told me. But I know you. If I could paint, I’m sure I’d set down a perfect likeness of you.”
“My darling.” She kissed him again, lightly. She passed her fingers back through his long hair that was mussed by the wind. “I could stay here . . . just as we are now . . . forever . . .”
The word seemed empty as “never” to him, but still he said, “Longer than that,” saying it easily for her, part of more that would have to be said between them, even “darling,” words, talk he never shared with Sygen. (He remembered Sygen’s describing to him for the first time what balloons were: floating on the air, yellow, green, red, blue, and white moons held to earth only by string and a child’s hand: her words were like this, drifting over, around them where they lay, held to the heart by a child’s hand.) He said, “Longer than that.” And she said, “Yes.”
He drew her down closer to him so he could feel the swell of her body against him.
He said, “You’re not cold here?”
She said, “I should be freezing to death. But I’m not even cold.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure. I’m very sure.” She squeezed him tightly as a sign of joy, the look of delight on her face almost the look of a child who can hardly believe the magician has really made the world or a rubber ball bouncing high or the blue shell picked up off the winter beach.
She spoke softly against his face, words she had said before, darling, abandoned and crazy words that made him want only their two bodies to exist in perfect silence. He was falling past words. His hands worked with their own way of seeing on her clothes as she spoke, as she kissed his shoulder, drawing his shirt down, ripping a button off, and she said, “Slowly. . . .” whispering, tightening to her own fear, gazing past him as he came to her, to the sea where it touched gray sky and the rages of clouds were caught in black winds, twisting. She let her knees move and wished for all to be done, but she said, “Slowly . . .” as one might draw a knife into one’s own flesh only to make silence.
But as he loved her now upon this sandy blanket, with bleak wind blowing cold past both their bodies, Jean could not drive the face he had of Sygen from his mind. He could hear the sea’s old music deep inside him, drifting wrecks and drowned faces taking a century to turn green; could hear this sea as he felt himself entering into her, her knees moved, as he felt her breasts like two miracles performed that very instant only for him. He thought loving Sygen had been like loving the sea. Their bodies together had always been like twin lights, as of sun and moon, falling through marvelous blue depths of the sea, falling slowly, endlessly, each new depth making whatever final destination they might reach more unbelievably lovely and worlds passing before their eyes that no man had ever before seen. Embracing Sygen now seemed to him as if he had embraced the very sea itself.
But with Miss Smith, feeling her heart pounding inside her, feeling the complete surrender of her mouth, the miracle of her nakedness that she made a part of him, Jean felt as if he were embracing the land, not this beach alone, not a mile or ten miles of it, but the land leading back into the world, all land, the
world itself, all seas apart; he felt his passion reaching not into the world of unknown miracles and depths, but toward a world men knew and ruled, a world whose life had begun in those sea depths, but now was lived apart, majestic in reason and stone beneath the blinding canopy of stars.
Hearing her cry in joy against him, Jean knew the love he felt now was the love all other men knew. He too had come up finally out of the sea to live his life upon the land.
chapter 6
one
TICO REEVES in his black leather jacket had eyes of turquoise that caught the sun the way the sea did and let it burn there the way the sea did. His face was sculptured, as if out of fine stone grown ancient in many winds, and yet the face was one of a young man, perhaps young only as a face, even a Medici, caught in youth, three or four hundred years ago by the artist’s eye, but still young in the cryptic gallery, hung there as futile monument against the dark. Even the scar on his chin, a knife wound, seemed to belong there, and without it his face, his entire person, would have taken on the vaguely disturbing quality of an incomplete work of art.
On this morning Tico Reeves again had come to the beach to watch the girl with the golden hair. He had found a job in town washing dishes, this time in a small green restaurant run by twin sisters whose names were Dolly and Mae Howard. Both sisters had dyed their hair a dark red color and they enjoyed a joke, sometimes to the point of giggling uncontrollably, that one would always be telling on the other about how she (meaning either one) had dyed her hair that color after one night having seen Rita Hayworth in a movie.
The sisters were in their early forties. They were buxom, soft women who smiled most of the time and should have been mothers long ago. They always wore print dresses covered with flowers and birds and streaks of color that looked as if someone had thought it possible to make the rainbow out of a piece of cloth. They had hired Tico Reeves as a dishwasher and within five days’ time they had both (as they had known they would even on the first day) fallen madly in love with him.
They would watch the powerful easy muscles of his back as he lifted a wooden rack of dishes from the dishwashing machine or rolled the garbage cans out into the alley every night. Tico Reeves wore no shirt when he worked, the steam coming at him constantly as if in hunger to devour him as he stood there oblivious to its purpose. And so the sisters had much opportunity to admire his fine half-naked body and then go off together to whisper behind closed doors of its manly beauty.
Neither sister had spoken right out to ask Tico Reeves to come to bed with her, but each of them when they were alone with him was suggestive enough to make the situation quite plain to the young man. Dolly Howard had a habit of brushing up against Tico Reeves, while her sister had the habit of always fixing her stockings or the strap of her brassiere when he was present.
But though Tico Reeves wanted no part of the sisters, he gave each of them the impression that the day of love would be soon in coming, thus not only keeping hope alive in them, but feeding the romantic’s lust to stand always at the edge of the attainable. And so he would have his easy way with them, and they both said they thought it a wonderful thing to do, to go running along the beach the way he did. He had told them he had once been a fighter and that he still did roadwork to keep himself in condition. The sisters were thrilled with the idea of his having been a fighter and sometimes they would ask him to tell stories of his fights, which he did, making them up pretty much as he went along, even enjoying himself the images he could conjure up with what he knew well enough to be a series of comically outrageous lies. In almost every fight he was badly beaten (always describing blood streaming from wide cuts, torn flesh he could taste inside his mouth, ribs that felt broken) in the first half of the battle, but he would always come back (dripping blood like a hunted beast hunting the hunter) to stage a heroic victory, and the sisters would be nearly breathless with excitement by the time he came to the final round.
So he would do his roadwork and come several mornings a week to the beach to watch for the young girl.
On this morning, however, Tico Reeves saw something he had never seen before. He was still a good distance from the gray frame house when he saw the old man seated hunched over on the sand so at first he seemed like a pile of seaweed or a huge rock or some bit of wreckage that had been washed up on the beach. He was seated, cross-legged, down near the water where every wave coming in seemed about to reach him, but none did.
At first Tico Reeves was about to walk on past the old man. His eyes caught hold of a shred of yellow paper being blown down the beach, turning limp somersaults as if it had learned to do this the way a man or even a child learns a trick, playing this way, the yellow paper. Then his eyes crossed the sand from yellow to blue: the old man had a pile of blue-black shells in front of him and he was lifting them to his mouth one by one, slurping in meat out of the shells, making a loud noise each time he did it, gulls on the sand near him flinching at the sound, two flying off, the other always returning with the stalked curiosity of creatures grown accustomed to simple fears.
Tico Reeves started to move closer so he could see exactly what it was this bent-up, busted creature was eating. But as he did, the old man reeled around, grunting, large eyes gleaming a green-yellow color, and Tico Reeves stopped where he was like a trapped thief.
The two men stared at each other for some time the way animals do when they meet in the wood and can have no way of knowing whether this is sworn mortal enemy or friend or merely a shadow that passes across eyes as clouds move on the wind past either sun or moon. There was a worn-out violence in the eyes of the old man, a violence stripped bare not by passage of years or thinning of blood, but by the increasingly impossible ends toward which that violence reached.
They stared, the one squatting, the other standing. Gulls walked between them. Then Tico Reeves smiled slowly and said, “Good morning.”
The old man did not speak.
Tico Reeves still had the smile on his lips, but not with him smiling any more really, the smile like an image that remains for a second in the eye after we have turned away from what-ever made the image. He walked down the beach toward the old man. He shoved his hands into the back pockets of his cotton trousers.
When Tico Reeves was within two yards of him, the old man blurted out, “Whatta ya want?” He cocked his round head over to one side as if he had to do that in order to be able to see.
“Just walkin’,” said Tico Reeves.
“So you’re just walkin’,” the old man said.
Tico Reeves was standing over the old man now. He saw a pile of empty shells and a small pile of shells that had not yet been opened. The sea spray blew in over his face; he could taste it.
“You never seen mussels before?” the old man asked. “Huh?”
“You eatin’ them?” Tico Reeves asked.
“No! No,” said the old man. “Hell Jesus no, I ain’t eatin’ ’em. Me, I’m makin’ a necklace out of ’em. I’m makin’ a pretty fucko Jesus necklace out of ’em so I’ll be beautiful, you bastard.” He laughed a deep throaty sound, the laughter scraping against his throat, a raw kind of laugh.
“Sit down, sit down,” the old man said then, impatiently, slapping the sand with one hand. “Sit down!”
Tico Reeves accepted the invitation and sat down.
“Good,” the old man muttered as he sucked another mussel out of the half shell, chewed briefly, then swallowed. “So do you want some of ’em?” he asked Tico Reeves. “Huh?”
Tico Reeves smiled, more out of a feeling that words were of no use to him now and maybe the smiling could be enough. He said in a quiet, toneless voice, “Not right now.”
The old man sniggered, scratched the corner of his mouth with sandy fingers. “Not right now,” he repeated in a high, mocking tone. “You want a pot full of hot water to put ’em in first, huh?” He laughed, loud now, rocking fiercely back and forth, the laughter seeming to expose him as a confession might expose an ordinary man. When he stopped he
pried open another shell with yellow teeth and fingers, this time took out the bluish-pink bit of meat, held it up before Tico Reeves, and then tossed it into his mouth as if he were feeding a dog or a walrus. He swallowed without bothering to chew it first.
“I seen you,” the old man said with a sly squinting expression that could have been simple grinning or else outrage clumsily spoken, inarticulate, the outrage of a creature who does not even know there is anything like outrage to choose from out of all that man can feel or even be. “I see everything down here. Jesus yes. Huh?” He cocked his head forward, but then realizing he had not missed anything the young man might have said, he cleared his throat, spit a large glob of yellow phlegm off to one side. “Good! Good!” he muttered, nodding, pleased, staring off at the phlegm for a moment as its color dissolved into the gray color of sand. Then he turned back to the young man, narrowing eyes, chewing one corner of his mouth.
The old man spoke with a heavy accent Tico Reeves could not identify. He sounded as if the words had been shoved into his mouth like stones and he had to exert great cunning and strength to spit them out without choking in the process. The accent was that of a man come from a country that had yet to be given a name so that it could exist for other men.
“I had a cat once,” the old man said. “She could spit six feet. Six feet, hear? We’d spit together. Sure. We’d sit someplace and just spit. Maybe for hours.” He nodded vigorously. “For hours we’d spit, this here cat and me. She could spit fierce. Jesus O! She could. Sometimes she’d beat me. Hear? Sometimes she’d beat me. A cat . . .”
“That’s quite a cat,” said Tico Reeves.
“That’s quite a cat,” mimicked the old man. “Spit six feet, hear? She followed me out of a railroad yard. Stayed with me three years. Maybe five years.” Then a bewildered look crossed the old man’s large eyes, and he said, “A cat. Or a dog . . . a dog maybe.” He shrugged, blew out air as if this too were speaking. “You learn to eat any fuckin’ thing.” And he fell silent.