Hey, sleepyhead, his father would say. Let’s get you in the water, and they’d walk down to the beach together hand in hand enjoying their shadows stretching out before them.
The driver was on an ocean road, following the contours of the coast. It was quiet out here and he enjoyed the peace. He took a road down towards the beach, descending as the sun began to set. He pulled up on a platform that overlooked the water and sat in the car and looked out at the sea. He was crying as he thought he saw his father’s lengthening shadow out there on the shoreline. A man walked up the beach and motioned to him to lower his window.
You can’t park here, said the man. His face looked pinched like he was used to delivering bad news. Private beach, he said. You’ll have to take the road back out. He indicated the single track he’d just driven down.
The driver leant forward in his seat and pulled the revolver from the back of his jeans. He held it up in profile and showed it to the man.
I have five bullets left, he said. I’d be happy for you to have all of them. Now why don’t you take the long walk back up that road because I’m not going anywhere. The man’s features uncoiled and he looked younger suddenly.
Walk, said the driver and the man did, backwards at first and then he turned and started to run.
Should have shot him, thought the driver, he’ll be back and he’ll bring people with him, he’ll bring the cops. He couldn’t stomach killing another man though. He wondered if his father had ever tired of the violence, of the brutality that he’d built his world upon. The times he’d seen him fight or been on the receiving end of one of his enraged attacks he’d been amazed by the buzzing, panting energy he gave off (even through his fingers, even while the air was being kicked out of him), how happily lost he had become in the violence.
His father was out on the water now calling him in. He got out of the car and walked down onto the sand, taking off the bloodstained clothes as he went and dropping them to the sand. He felt the breeze on his skin and shaded his eyes so he could watch the gulls drifting just feet above the incoming waves. His father was up to his waist out there and splashing the surface with his hand. Water was caught in drops in the grey hair of his chest and he was laughing at something.
He felt the water lapping against his calves.
Hey, shouted his dad, where’s your Underoos? He indicated his son’s naked form standing in the surf. He waded out, then threw himself forward, breaking the surface, the water washing the blood from his limbs, the salt worrying the cuts in his skin. It made him feel cleansed. He stayed submerged and touched the boxes in his basement, heard their voices and felt the life pulsing through them as he reached out to touch them in the darkness. He felt the miles rolling away under his wheels and then he was pushing out further into the Pacific as the sound of police sirens rose from the hill somewhere off towards the shore. His father hugged him. They were in deep now, there was no going back. His father held his face with both hands as someone called to them from up on the hill. It was a warning, he knew.
You’re a good kid, said his dad, and he was young again and on the Jersey shore high in the air on his dad’s shoulders looking out towards the horizon, squinting in the bright light and wondering what was beyond. There was more shouting from behind him and the quick zing of bullets flying by and he couldn’t be sure, but he thought he saw his dad off in the distance, breaking the water with every stroke, his bobbing figure turning and calling him forward with a wave of his glistening arm and he threw himself forward, becoming one with the water as the day darkened and the ocean kept coming.
Endsong
The driver stood in the barely lit office. Above his head bulbs glowed and then burnt out. The sound of typing from the room next door clattered through his head and made his eyes ache. Up ahead, through the maze of boxes and folders he could make out a figure hunched over a giant desk, his features barely lit by a small lamp to his right. He had his sleeves rolled up as if he was really busy, as if there were always things to do. The gloom reminded him of his basement and he took some solace in that. He liked the darkness, he just wished they’d shut up in the next office. It was the kind of high, pealing sound that put his teeth on edge, like biting into the silver paper you used to get with gum.
The man got up from his desk and moved slowly across the room to a tall, wavering column of black and red folders. As he unfolded himself, the driver could see just how tall he was, he seemed to brush the ceiling and obscure the hundreds of bulbs above him. He pulled down a folder and took out a bundle of neatly tied index cards and then returned the box gently to its place at the top of the pile. He returned to his desk and sat down with a sigh, took a pencil from his pocket and ticked something in the right-hand corner of the card. As he did so another bell rang somewhere, it was clear and warm as it sang and he knew that it was calling for him. And then the giant of a man called him forward as his father once had.
Cross Country Murder Song Page 21