Water's End

by Jessica Deforest

  He looked like nothing so much as a charming pouty-faced little boy cast in gold. But his body was anything but a little boy's.

  As he lay there, sprawled in the moonlight, she knew he was more beautiful than any painting, any sculpture she had seen in a museum or book. This man was art in the flesh. She wasn't sure if he was really beautiful, or if she just thought so because she loved him so.

  Did nature make him just for me? It didn't matter. She delighted in him, utterly and profoundly, in the look of him, the smell and taste of him, in everything they said and did together, in the way he treated her, the way he looked at her, the way he smiled.

  Pulling the sheet up over them, she put her hand in his and slept the sleep of the joyful.

  Chapter 10

  After breakfast the next morning, David kissed her and then held her at arm's length. "How about coming to California with me for the Fourth of July?" he asked. "I want you to meet my mom and dad, and my two grandmas."

  "I wish I could, but I can't afford a trip like that. I haven't been working as much, and I'm not making any extra money." She paused. "I've also got to get my car fixed and put new tires on it. I don't know why the IRS doesn't let us claim cars as dependents on our income-taxes."

  He laughed. "We can take my car, silly, and if we drive straight through, we won't have hotel bills. It's about a twenty-four hour drive from here."

  "But I can't travel alone with you. What would my mom and your parents think?"

  "I've already thought of that. Connie Childs, that WAC who works at the library, wants to go home then, too. She's from Irvine. She can ride with us and be your, you know, your chaperone. Okay?"

  "When do we leave?"

  "June twenty-eighth okay with you?"

  She nodded in agreement. That meant she had three days to get ready. Taking vacation time was no problem, considering all the extra hours they worked on special projects. She cleared it with Betty that day and stopped off at her mom's house the next evening to tell her she was going to California.

  "You're going where?" her mother asked.

  "I told you, I'm going to Newport Beach to meet David's family, and I just wanted to let you know I'd be gone for about ten days so you wouldn't worry if you couldn't reach me."

  "Sounds kind of serious."

  "I hope so."

  "So you're in love again." Agnes's voice had a sarcastic edge.

  "Mom, don't say it like that. You've met him, and he thinks you're wonderful."

  "Yes, yes, he is a very nice young man. You always seem to have some fellow pining for you. I just can't understand it. You were married in the Church, and you can never marry again. Your soul is in mortal danger."

  "Let it be, Mom."

  But Agnes had started on one of her tirades, and once she gained momentum, she was like a boulder rolling downhill. There'd be no stopping her unless Anne could distract her and get her off on another subject.

  "Sure is a long trip. We're driving, you know."

  "Jesus, Mary, and Joseph," Agnes said, fanning her face with a hanky.

  "Don't worry. David's a good driver."

  "But what will people say?" her mother asked. You can't just go off gallivanting across the country with some man you're not married to. Why, you're not even engaged. Think of your reputation. What would people say? You should be dating other people, young lady. Playing the field. Trouble is, you don't have any experience."

  "Mom, another woman is going along. Connie Childs. She's an army sergeant and works at the library."

  "Oh," Agnes said. "One of those WACs. You know those lady soldiers are no good, not a one of them. Wild young hellions. Only join the army for one thing." She grimaced.

  "Mom, Connie's a nice person," Anne said. She's got to be forty, and she's a shy old maid. Probably never had a date in her life. I'm going to be okay."

  "Well, don't come crying to me when this David fellow breaks your heart. He's too damned pretty, if you ask me. Those handsome men are nothing but trouble, you'll see.” Agnes shook her finger at her daughter. “And then I'll say I told you so."

  "I know you will," Anne muttered under her breath. "I'll call you when we get back."

  The next couple of days she spent packing, unpacking, then repacking her suitcase, trying to decide what to take with her. In the end, she decided on two suitcases, knowing she was dragging along entirely too much. But she wanted to look perfect for David's family.

  The night they left, David rearranged the trunk of his car to get the extra suitcase in. "Anne," he said, "they do have clothes in California. If you need something that won't fit in one suitcase, you can buy it." Seeing the expression on her face, he said, "Don't worry, babe, we'll take it if we have to put wheels on it and drag it behind us."

  The Oldsmobile's trunk was big enough to hold two or three people, but it was full of junk David had been hauling around ever since he brought his car back with him. Finally, he got a garbage can from the back of her house and completely cleaned out the trunk.

  He dug out empty root-beer bottles, sandwich wrappers, several empty boxes, a dirty towel with a hole in it, polishing rags, a container of dried-up car wax, wadded-up paper napkins from the drive-in theater, a threadbare tire, and an inner tube that would no longer hold air. All went sailing into the garbage can, along with numerous bits and pieces of newspaper, magazines, and greasy paper towels.

  "Okay, that solves that little problem," he said, "and there's still plenty of room for Connie's bag. Let's go get her."

  They picked up Connie at the barracks, and David put her small suitcase next to Anne's bulging luggage, closed the trunk, and they were off down the highway, traveling down the Kansas Turnpike to pick up Route 66.

  Planning to drive straight through, they left at eight o’clock, which would put them in the desert the next evening, when it wasn't so hot. They traveled through Oklahoma, across the Texas panhandle, through New Mexico and Arizona, to California.

  The temperature hit 120 degrees in the shade when they went through Needles and drove across the Colorado River. The trip took a total of twenty-four hours, and Anne felt as if she never wanted to drive or ride in a car again as long as she lived.

  Exhausted and hungry, she felt as if her skin would burn right off in the hot desert breeze, even though it was early evening and the sun was going down.

  "Are we there yet?" Anne asked.

  "Almost. It's not far from here."

  "Good, because I am going to be permanently paralyzed if I don't get up and walk around. My behind has turned to granite."

  In a few minutes, they left the highway, and drove a few miles out into the desert on a bumpy road before pulling into the driveway of a modest stone house with a flat roof.

  A small woman with gray hair got up from the front porch swing and ran to the car. "David. You're here at last. We were worried about you."

  "Grandma," he said, swinging her up in his arms and kissing her cheek. "Took a little longer than we wanted to. Had to change a tire."

  He didn't say anything about the blowout in Flagstaff, Arizona, that threw them into the path of a Greyhound bus as Anne was trying to pass a car going up a steep grade. David had grabbed the steering wheel and yanked the wheel until they were suddenly on the shoulder of the road, breathing hard, but clear of the bus.

  "And who have we here?" David's grandmother asked.

  "Someone special," he said, smiling broadly. "This is Anne Mills, the girl from Kansas I've told you so much about."

  The old woman smiled at her and said, "You don't have a dog named Toto, do you?"

  "No, but my cousin Dorothy does."

  David's grandma laughed and hugged her, patting her back as she did. "I'm May Ferris. It’s so good to meet you at last. And who is this other lovely lady, David?"

  "Oh, sorry, Grams. This is Connie Childs, a friend of ours who works in the library. She's the only reason I could drag Anne out here. Anne's old fashioned; said she couldn't travel this far without a chaper
one."

  His grandmother raised her eyebrows and then winked. "And she's right, my dear. So Connie, I want to thank you for making it possible for Anne to be here. I've heard so much about her, I was beginning to believe maybe David invented her. But I can see he wasn't fibbing."

  They went inside. Anne loved the house, with its high, beamed ceiling and a fieldstone fireplace that filled one entire wall. Outside it was still hot, but this cave-like room was several degrees cooler. "I can't believe how good it feels in here," Anne said, "but I thought you didn't have an air conditioner."

  "We got the swamp cooler last year. An evaporative air conditioner that cools with water. But we don't need it much. It's these thick walls, my dear, two feet of stone and mortar. And a lot of insulation in the roof. It's a good thing, too, because we just got electricity last year. See those oil lamps on the shelf there? That's all we used to have for light. Here," she said, handing Anne a lamp with a spray of dried flowers glued on it. "I decorated this one for you. Oh, and before I forget, let me show you where the necessary is."

  They went out back to an outhouse. It was a privy just like her aunt had before they put in the sewer line. But when she looked inside, there was no disgusting trench full of waste beneath the seat, only a tray filled with white powder. "Where's the rest of it?" Anne asked.

  "Oh, I forgot. You're from the East. This is our version of an outhouse, and that's all there is to it. We don't need anything else. That's lime in there, and the desert is so dry, we don't have a problem with decay or odor. Everything just evaporates." She chuckled. "Gotta be careful out here that we don't do the same."

  Back inside, May Ferris beckoned to her. "Come back here. I want to show you my friend." She stepped into the pantry and removed a thin baby blanket from a pasteboard box. "Look. Little fellow is just waking up. Time to feed him."

  In the box was a baby rabbit with huge ears and soft brown fur. "Here. You hold him while I fix his dinner," she said, placing the bunny in Anne's hand.

  The tiny animal, soft as down, twitched its nose. David's grandmother came back with a doll bottle full of warm milk. "Want to feed him?"

  Anne thrilled to the silky warmth of the tiny rabbit, which held onto the bottle with its front paws, closed its eyes, and sucked away.

  David's grandma stroked the little head. "Rattlesnake got his mama, poor thing. It was curled up in her nest, getting ready to eat this baby too, before I removed that snake's head with a garden hoe. So I'll raise the little fellow, then turn him back into the desert and hope he makes it. Maybe he'll have some kind of chance."

  Following a supper of fried chicken, sliced tomatoes and potato salad, they went back to the front porch. Anne shivered, amazed at how much it had cooled off. "Is it always cold at night like this?"

  "Yes," said Mrs. Ferris. "The desert is a place of extremes. As hot as it is in the daytime, it turns pretty cold at night. But it's lovely in its own way. Just look how big that sky is."

  "The stars are brighter here," David said, looking up. "I love the beach, but the desert is special in its own way."

  Anne was drowsy. Although she and David had taken turns driving and sleeping during the trip, Anne felt as if she'd been awake for a week, because she couldn't seem to sleep soundly while David drove. On the other hand, David was able to sink instantly into a near-coma when it was Anne's turn at the wheel.

  That night, Connie slept in the twin bed next to hers, snoring so loudly that she could no longer hear the eerie wailing of the coyotes, and Anne slept as soundly as she ever had in her life.

  The next morning, after breakfast, Mrs. Ferris took them out into the yard, which consisted of a lot of sand and a few cacti. "I wanted you to see my glass garden," she said, pointing to a wagon wheel pressed into the sand. Glass bottles of various colors lay inside the wheel.

  "How wonderful," Anne said. "Some of them look as if they have rainbows on them."

  David's grandmother picked up a lavender bottle and handed it to her. "The sun affects the chemicals in the glass and turns them those pretty colors. You keep that little bottle as a remembrance. Lovely, aren't they?"

  Anne nodded.

  Mrs. Ferris hugged her. "And so are you, my dear. Wish you could stay here forever. You and David make a beautiful couple. Maybe you'll be back."

  "Maybe."

  "I hope so."

  Reluctantly, they left at eight o'clock that morning, trying to avoid some of the desert heat, but it was already hot as a steel mill. "We should have been out of here by six," David said. "It's already getting hot."

  It took them another two and a half hours to drive down through Riverside and Corona, and on into Irvine, where they left Connie. From there it didn't take them long to get to Newport Beach. The air grew cooler as they got closer to the water.

  She was astonished at the traffic around her and the newness of everything. Her little Kansas hometown lay frozen in time, full of Victorian houses and old storefronts, surrounded by rolling hills and farms. This area, on the other hand, in fact everything she had seen so far, was new, as if it had been built within the last twenty-four hours. Nothing was old, or dirty, for that matter.

  "It's construction elves," David said. "We have them here in California. They come out at night while we're sleeping. They take away all our landmarks and build things to confuse us." He grinned. "Makes it tough. Sometimes they change things so much I get lost because everything looks so different."

  Anne had never seen mountains before, and now she had driven through them and could see more mountains off to her right, hazy and majestic. Nor had she seen the ocean, though she had imagined it since she was small.

  Soon they pulled into a narrow street behind some houses crammed together with fences and gates between. "Here we are, 2205 Beachshore Drive. Mom and Dad's house," David said, parking behind a brown-shingled bungalow.

  She followed him through the gate and around to the front porch, and there it was. The Pacific loomed up ahead of her, stopping her in her tracks. Its size and the way it towered over the beach amazed her. She hadn't imagined it so, but thought it would be flat, like a lake.

  "There it is," she said. "I'm really seeing it. All my life I've dreamed about the ocean, and I'm really here."

  "Yes, indeed you are," said a woman's voice from the patio.

  She turned her head to see a lovely redhead in Capri pants walking toward her. "Anne?" the woman said, opening her arms. "I'm David's mom. Welcome to Newport Beach."

  She hadn't expected David's mom to be young and beautiful. Anne walked into Angela Hawkins's outstretched arms and gave her a hug.

  "David has done nothing but talk about you since he first met you," Angela said. "It's good to see you for real."

  "And I've wanted to meet you, too, Mrs. Hawkins. This is all too wonderful. I worry sometimes that I may be dreaming this."

  "Please call me Angie. And here comes David's father. George," she said, "look who's here."

  A man came walking up from the beach, kicking sand before him, with a big collie on his heels. Tall and fit, he had a thick head of black hair and a deep tan. When he got closer, she could see his eyes were ice blue.

  Ahhh, Black Irish, she thought. They're some of the most gorgeous people on the planet.

  The dog came bounding up to David as soon as he saw him, then turned to Anne and licked her hands, all the while waving a big flag of a tail that David claimed could be lethal indoors.

  "Laddie. Down, boy," George Hawkins said. He put out his hand in welcome, squeezing hers warmly and melting her with a smile. It made her wonder what David would be like when he reached his forties.

  She hoped they still would be together then.

  Chapter 11

  They spent the afternoon on the front porch, watching the surf roll in as they sipped iced tea and ate corn chips and guacamole. Anne had never tasted anything like it. In fact, she had never seen an avocado before and was amazed that anything so ugly could taste so good.

  "What do
you think of California, Anne?" David's father asked her.

  "It's so different from anywhere I've ever been before, all mountains and ocean. And everything is so new," she said. "I love it."

  George Hawkins adjusted his aviator sunglasses. "Can't say I blame you," he said. "I have to go to the East Coast on business sometimes. Their summers are not too bad, but I can't stand the darkness in the winter."

  "It's hot out here," David said. "Come on, Annie, let's climb into our swimsuits and get wet."

  When Anne appeared in a tiny blue and white bikini, David let out a low wolf whistle. "I like that little thing you're almost wearing," he said, "and the body in it isn't bad, either."

  Anne was aware of appreciative stares when she and David walked down to the water. His mother wore a bikini the color of her eyes, green, that got plenty of attention too. David's father trailed behind them as they ran into the water and splashed around in the surf.

  After an hour or so, they went inside, showered, and changed into clean clothes.

  They had no sooner sat down on the front patio when Anne was startled to see David suddenly jump up and strip off his shorts. One moment he was sitting next to her, eating corn chips, and the next he was running down the beach in his boxers, yanking off his shirt.

  Wordlessly, he headed for the surf and sliced into the waves in a flawless racing dive. They could see him knifing through the water, headed away from shore. In a few minutes, after he disappeared momentarily behind a wave, they saw him again, swimming parallel to the beach for some time before heading in to shore. He was towing someone.

  They ran down to the water, and David's father helped him drag a man up onto the beach, where the fellow fought to catch his breath.

  "Undertow," David said. "Sorry I just took off like that with no explanation. I saw him floundering and trying to swim against the current. In a few more minutes he'd have gone down. No fighting an undertow. You have to swim across it until you're out of it."