CHAPTER THIRTEEN: INTO THE KINGDOM OF GLASS

copyright 209 by Jim nail

It doesn’t lead him where he thought it would.

He thought it would lead him to the heart of town, a place he’s been a few times before but only because he had to, the bustling center of commerce where goods are exchanged and government is exercised, and people rub shoulders with other people in the public arena. Mass movements, Carl would call it. The amalgamation of the establishment, Floyd would say, the place where peace and love become commodities that are bought and sold. Wilbo would give it another image: the conscious mind; the quintessence of inland, the outward expression.

To turn inland, he thinks to himself, as he crosses the intersection of the Coast Highway, where there’s no crosswalk or traffic light, and the log trucks and micro-busses are clipping by at the mandated 55 miles per hour. A well-worn metaphor, that one: the shoreline as the edge of consciousness. It’s just the opposite of what you might think. To turn inland is to turn outward. It depends on the direction you’re facing. The ocean is the unconscious, the unknown. It’s vast and uncharted, and teeming with strange creatures. It’s difficult to go there. The land is where the people are. It’s where they meet and mingle and carry on business. It’s commerce. It’s the conscious mind. But the shore. The shore is that narrow strip between the two. It’s the place where the conscious and the unconscious meet. It’s where I live…

Perhaps it’s being lost in these deep thoughts that causes him to miss the sign at the intersection, inscribed inside the pointed wooden arrow: BUSINESS CENTER 1.5 MILES. The other problem is that he’s hungry and part of him is thinking about this café he knows about downtown. They make pretty good pastrami sandwiches. But he’s well past the intersection with the arrowed sign when he realizes this. He’s on a country road by this time, winding its way up into the hills.

The rain has stopped, but the road is wet and the pines that line the road are speaking in their water voices. There’s the smell of sage blossoms and skunk cabbage. Cars swish by leisurely, one at a time with long buzzing quiet spaces in between.

Up ahead is a makeshift fruit stand in a clearing on the right hand side of the road. Painted signs nailed to trees promise PEACHES, MELONS, TOMATOES, BOYSENBERRIES. But the sign on the stand itself bears bad news: CLOSED UNTIL SEPTEMBER. However, there is something going on. A straw basket sits on the counter, brimming with shiny red globes, and there’s a green Volkswagen beetle parked beside the stand. Coming closer, Wilbo reads a small cardboard placard propped up against the basket: WINTER APPLES, LAST CHANCE.

A young girl in the visible throes of puberty is perched on a folding metal chair, her attention firmly fixed in a popstar magazine. She looks up with a start. She wasn’t expecting to see a man standing there. There was no car.

“Excuse me,” Wilbo announces himself apologetically, “How much would you take for one of these winter apples?”

“Oh, you scared the shit out of me!” says the girl. She throws the magazine onto the counter and drags the chair back. “You have to buy them by the pound,” she informs him. “We don’t sell apples.”

Wilbo picks out the largest apple he can find and tosses it in the air a few times. “Well, how much you think this one weighs?”

“That’s only one apple. I said you gotta by them by the pound. Seventy five cents a pound.”

He sets the apple down on the counter and selects another. This one he does not toss, but he turns it thoroughly and inspects it from all angles.

“These two then. Put them together. How much would they weigh?”

The girl rolls her eyes and pulls herself to her feet. She places the apples in a bucket scale and leans over to read the weight.

“Nope. Sorry, still not a pound.” She’s about to take the apples out of the scale but Wilbo stops her by placing two more randomly selected apples in the bucket.

“Well, how ‘bout that? Is that a pound?”

She read the scale. “Pound and a quarter.” she announces. “That’d be a dollar.”

He reaches in his pocket and fishes out some change, two quarters, three dimes, four nickels.

“Here, hold out your hand.”

Reluctantly she extends a hand, palm up, and he takes it from below, cradling her down-turned knuckles firmly but tenderly with his big fingers. With his other hand full of change he covers her palm and holds her hands there in his hands for just a moment while the money falls from his hand into hers. He can’t explain this bizarre gesture- it just seems like the thing to do. What surprises him is the sensuality of it, the pleasure of the contact, skin to skin. It embarrasses him a little.

“There you go. That’s a dollar.” He slowly relinquishes his grip. Then he picks up the biggest of the apples.

“This is the only one I want. You can keep the rest.”

“Yeah, well, whatever.” The girl seems a little disoriented. She just stands there staring at the two remaining apples on the scale, as if they hold some hidden secret.

“Have a nice day.” she says finally, after Wilbo has turned to leave.

He walks with the apple in his hand for a while, through several bends in the road, past a farmhouse, an orchard, a row of painted mailboxes, a stand of foxgloves blooming in brilliant violet. The apple is cold and smooth and foreign in his hand. He imagines the apple is more than an apple. The apple is a prize he had to wrestle out of another dimension. If there was a picture of him walking down the road with his apple, everything else in the picture would be cast in dull earth tones; the apple would be glowing a numinous crimson as if backlit by an otherworldly light.

The road straightens out and starts up a long steep incline without a visible bend for as far as the eye can see, or nearly. At the summit the two shoulders appear to converge at a dimensionless point, blurred by mirage, and by a horizontal ribbon of low-lying fog. As if suspended in air the blue-green tips of the redwoods poke out of the fog and point to the sky.

Up ahead, a round coin of sunlight appears suddenly on the shiny surface of the road and begins to move. It follows the pavement, advancing swiftly down the slope, like a running egg yolk, toward the place where Wilbo walks. The moment it reaches him the sun itself pummels out of the clouds overhead and everything goes suddenly Technicolor. Wilbo stops walking and gazes into the rise of the road ahead where the sunlight has already passed and the cloud shadows are brooding.

“Might be time to eat that apple.” he says.

A sawed-off tree stump by the roadside offers a suitable place to sit. The apple itself is maybe a bit anti-climatic- it is, after all, only an apple. But it’s a good one, crisp and juicy, and the juice runs down his chin like the juice should run from a good apple. Besides, he’s hungry. He hasn’t eaten a thing since breakfast at Macs. He devours the apple in circles from the stem down, breaking off chunks with his lower teeth. He eats the whole thing, core and all.

Then he glances up the road ahead and his eyes lock in mid-focus.

There’s something going on up there. It’s hard to say what it is because it’s so far away, close to where the roadbed merges with the fog. It looks like the road itself is moving, a shimmering sideways sort of motion, not quite like the flow of water- it seems to be composed of distinct, individual particles. At first he thinks it’s a heat mirage, but no, it doesn’t look like a heat mirage. What could it be?

He’s on his feet at once, and starts up the long steep slope. His eyes are fixed on the movement and his thoughts are clear of anything except curiosity and wonder. Curiosity and wonder propel him faster than his internal speed limit. His heart begins to pound, his breathing becomes labored; he feels the strain in the muscles of his calves and thighs. But he stays with the movement, watching the focus sharpen the closer he gets, like a movie on the screen after someone from the audience runs up and arouses the projectionist.

Yes, for sure, near the summit of the hill, something is wriggling, slithering, or flowing across the road from right to left, from the mountainside to the ocean side. At first he thinks there’s water, and whatever it is is being washed across the road in a stream of water, maybe fish or just some kind of debris, caught in a flash flood. But no, drawing closer he sees that the road is dry and speckled; the speckles are in motion. Looking closer he sees color, flashes of color, streaks of vivid popsicle orange. Then he sees the legs, then the tails. He reaches the edge of the living stream and stops to catch his breath and marvel at the sight.

Hundreds, maybe thousands of salamanders are pouring out of the dense wall of blackberry and vine maple on the right hand side of the road and scurrying across the pavement as if it isn’t even there, as if it is just a band of weather through which they must pass. On the left hand side the shoulder drops off abruptly into a green grassy hill tumbling into the town and into the sea. Wilbo can hear the little bodies continuously plopping off the edge like raindrops, and he can hear the rustling of movement through the tall grass.

He leans over and picks up a salamander between his thumb and forefinger. Its back is brown and scratchy, like a moist piece of sandpaper, its belly smooth and brilliant orange. Its legs keep moving in the same steady rhythm, marching time in the air. He holds it for several seconds and it does not lose momentum. When he sets it down, it continues at its pace, as if nothing has happened.

For a while he just stands there, struck by wonder at the sight, no clear thoughts forming.

Eventually the thoughts begin to form.

This is strange on many levels, he thinks to himself. In the first place, what if a car came by? But there aren’t any cars in sight. The road still seems to be leading someplace but most of its destinations have already passed- the driveways, the farmhouses, the fruit stands. What’s left is a rutted and gravel path, a road less traveled. This brings him to his next question.

What about me? Is this it? The end of the adventure? Is this, then, what I came to see, and all that’s left is to retrace my steps?

It doesn’t seem quite right to come this far on a road and then turn back, especially when the road still leads somewhere.

He contemplates the stream of moving creatures. He focuses on the gaps between them, and the advancing formations of the gaps, and the relative velocity, and the patterned angles, and the available freeboard.

Yes, he concludes, a crossing by foot is possible.

Addressing the stream a moment longer, he considers one more variable. It has no dimension, but it requires action.

First, remove the shoes.

With his shoes in his hands, his socks balled up in the shoes, Wilbo steps barefoot into the road. At the edge, the salamanders are sparsely populated- he has no trouble stepping into the spaces between them. But he must keep moving. The spaces fill quickly. About forty paces and he’s into the thick of it. His eyes are darting, tracking the passage of the space ahead, and the space ahead of that, one for the right foot, one for the left. It’s a bit like fording a stream on slippery stones. He must narrow his peripheral vision and shut out all other concerns. This creates a sort of vertigo in which the field of salamanders appears to be stationary, and it is he who is moving, listing precariously to the right. He feels dizzy. He stops in his tracks.

At once he becomes like a rock in a stream and the creatures swarm like water over his bare feet. The effect is disconcerting. He loses his balance completely and sinks to his hands and knees. One hand cups a salamander in motion but it manages to wriggle free and escape through his fingers. The others swarm over him, climbing over his ankles and wrists and passing in formation under his chest and arms.

Shaken and breathless, he pulls himself into a crouch and rises slowly on his trembling legs. He wishes for a railing or a walking stick. He wonders if he’s going to be able to complete this passage. But it’s just as hard to turn back now.

After his fall he no longer advances with confidence. Now he takes each step at a time, pausing in each footing, allowing the creatures to overtake him while he scans the road for the next.
About ten paces of this and he suddenly feels the unmistakable sensation of something crawling on the underside of his arm. In a panic, he flings his shoes away, but the salamander remains, plodding steadily up his arm toward his armpit. With his right hand he grabs it and throws it hard against the pavement, but it seems to be unharmed- it picks up its pace where it left off and keeps moving.

The shoes, however, have done some damage. One of them lies on its side over a limp body, an orange tail twitching convulsively against the laces. He reaches the shoe in two steps and snatches it up, but the damage is irreparable. The creature is mostly a flat patty of roadkill, only the tail retains some dimension.

First do no harm…

From this point on his passage is painstakingly slow and heavy with troubled thoughts. His thoughts are not clearly formed. He does not ponder. Most of his mental energy is required for the task. But he gets images and he hears voices and other sounds, not just voices. The sounds he hears are ocean sounds, like seals on the rocks, or the waves flinging pebbles, or the distant calliope of the carousel on the boardwalk. The voices are saying things like the dog will never catch his tail, or there is no coin with only one side. The images are mostly faces and the faces are mostly children’s faces, children moving quickly or children sleeping. But gradually another face begins to appear and slowly insists itself upon the palate of his mind. It’s the image of Arlequino, the one on the amulet, last seen hanging around Claudia’s neck.. The face plays tricks. The mouth smiles but the eyes cry. Sometimes the eyes hold so much sadness they make the smile look like a frozen grimace. Sometimes the mouth holds so much mirth it makes the eyes look like they’re about to brim with tears of joy.

At first he doesn’t notice that the road has entered the shade of the redwoods. He’s at a point where he can’t see either shore of the river of salamanders, ahead or behind. That’s when he looks up and sees the glass.

Suspended from a redwood branch overhanging the road, about twenty feet up, there’s a long slender teardrop of pure white glass. At first he thinks it’s moving, so fluid is its form. But no. It just drapes from the branch and hangs there suspended, catching the diffused sunlight in its translucent surface. The moment he sees it he feels a sudden hush fall on the forest, as if the very act of his seeing it could cause a sudden hush to fall on the forest. What could it be?

Then he sees the others.

Just ahead, the forest is full of glass. Clusters of glass grapes in deep greens and purples cascade over the outstretched limbs. Bird’s nests made of tiny glass straws, holding robin-blue glass eggs nestle in the crook of a branch. A chime of glass rods, each a different color and length, hangs from a piece of driftwood suspended from a copper wire. The moment he sees it a breeze disturbs it and it sings a tiny minor chord. A riot of cut glass prisms dangles form a gossamer thread strung between two trees. Around the trunk of a young redwood a glass snake spirals and glowers through garnet eyes. A glass stream cascades out of the hollow of an oak; tiny sparkles of color dance in the flow. A glass cobweb hangs between two branches, a glass spider guards the fulcrum, a glass dewdrop hangs from one strand. He’s not sure about the cobweb. It might be real.

Patches of sunlight appear and move rapidly through the trees, flaming each glass fragment for only a moment, then hurrying on. Wilbo stands motionless. Each moment of sun illuminates him briefly, as if he himself were made of glass.

He closes his eyes and watches the moving patterns of sunlight on his eyelids. High in the branches there’s a chattering sound, followed by a tapping and a clicking. Maybe a bird, maybe a squirrel. A high wind sways the very tops of the trees and strums a few bars of an ethereal melody, like something by Debussy. Down on the ground it’s still and silent.

Still and silent.

Wilbo opens his eyes. Still and silent! The salamanders are gone. The road is empty and motionless. For a moment he wrestles with a disturbing thought: were they ever there at all? But, yes, they were there. He has proof. Down the road in the distance a passing swatch of sunlight chases a few stragglers toward the shoulder.

Wilbo draws a deep breath of the loamy, forest-scented air, and releases it slowly through his nostrils, savoring the yeasts and the alkalines of decomposition.

Well then. That’s that. As adventures go, that was one of the stranger ones.

He brings his attention back to the road ahead where the forest is flashing, tinkling, and pulsating with color and light. And this is a bit out of the ordinary as well, he tells himself.

His first steps into the new adventure are hesitant. Translucent salamander ghosts appear on the pavement and expand until they lose their shape and vanish. But even then the road won’t lie still. It ripples and swirls like molten glass.

It’s Ok. It’s safe. You can walk on it. You don’t have to be careful anymore.

At the crest of the hill the road widens into a rounded open space. It’s very dark here. It’s the heart of the forest where the ancient, moss-hung redwoods are huddled together like a conference of wizards, and even if the sun were shining fully in the bright sky, very little of it could penetrate to this dark and quiet place. Wilbo scans the circle looking for where the road might go next. But this is the end of the road.

Directly across the clearing there is a house- a cabin- he doesn’t see it at first because the wood is unpainted and it blends in with the forest. A large porch wraps around the front of the cabin. Glass objects of many different shapes and colors spin and dangle from the eaves of the porch. A cord of firewood is stacked neatly, ten by ten, next to the open door. An axe with a shiny red blade leans against the logs. He sees something like a bright blue point of light dancing in the air above the porch railing. At first he thinks it’s a glass object, but no, it moves differently; there’s a willfulness behind its movements. Then he sees the man.

The man is sitting on a stool. He’s wearing a pair of thick dark goggles. His eyes are obscured. His face is thin and his hair is long and skinny. He’s doing something with his hands that makes a bright ball of blue light dance and flicker. Occasionally showers of white sparks fly from his fingers.

Wilbo smells something- no, he smells two things, layered and blended in the still air. There’s the strong industrial stench of burning acetylene, and there’s the slow, rolling aroma of wood smoke and something delicious, roasting on a wood fire.

He stands respectfully at the foot of the porch steps with his hands folded behind his back, presenting himself.

“Hello, Blue Lake.” he says.

Levon does not look up from his work. “Welcome, Wilbo. Would you like some fish?” Then his head nods imperceptibly to the right. “Opal, Wilbo is hungry. Fetch him some fish.”

He hadn’t noticed Opal at all. She is woven invisibly into the fabric of a quilt, draped over the back of a porch swing. When she rises, she seems to rise straight up, like smoke from a fire and then drifts silently like smoke down the porch steps and across the yard to where a ring of stones encloses a bed of embers. She sinks to her knees effortlessly and with bare hands draws a foil-wrapped parcel from the coals.

Meanwhile, Levon is conjuring up a blue heron from his wand of glass. The neck flows gracefully out of the flame and a tiny glass thread curlicues from the tip of the beak, solidifies, snaps off, then vanishes into thin air. Levon turns off the torch with a pop. He holds the heron in his gloved hand while it cools, then sets it down on the porch railing.

“Rest your feet, Wilbo. Eat some fish.”

Like an apparition of Sacajawea Opal Moon materializes before him, holding out an open foil of flame-baked salmon in one hand, a tall tumbler of cold water in the other.

These are the rules with Levon Blue Lake Moon and his wife Opal: you don’t worry about lulls in the conversation. There are no awkward pauses. Words happen only when required, to convey information. Wilbo takes a comfortable seat on the top step of the porch. There are no utensils but that’s not a problem. Propelled by a day-long appetite, quelled only by one small winter apple, he digs into the fish with his bare hands. It tastes like salt, water and sky, fused together by fire, seasoned with lemon. He eats slowly and the flavor seems to center him, to draw him into himself.

Blue Lake leans easily on the railing and looks out into the forest. “I won’t be at the Dogfish tonight,” he announces. “The newts are spawning. Send my regards.”

“You mean the salamanders?”

Levon nods. “It isn’t safe to drive.”

Wilbo considers this. He considers the way the salamanders made their crossing above the last driveway off the road. He thinks about Levon and Opal’s predicament, cut off from the rest of the world by the spawning of newts as surely as if they were drifts of snow.

“I don’t think I’ll be there tonight either.” he says quietly.

Some time passes. Opal returns to her place on the porch swing, folding back into the pattern of the quilt. Wilbo finishes his salmon and drains the tumbler dry. A squirrel scampers to the center of the clearing, stops, rears up and shakes his fist, at what? Who knows?

“Something has changed in your life.” Blue Lake says. He says it matter-of-factly, as if he is saying you’ve got a little fish caught in your beard.

Yes, this is true, Wilbo thinks to himself, but exactly what? It seems like many things have changed- a whole tumbling maelstrom of change, disrupting practically every aspect of who he is and what he does. It seems like everything has changed. He searches his mind for a cog in the machinery, the one main change that started it all.

“I met this girl.” he says at last.

Levon makes a deep utterance in the back of his throat, a word that can’t be spelled, like the Hebrew name for God.

“What’s her name?” he asks.

That much is easy. “Claudia.” he tells him.

Levon closes his eyes for awhile. It looks like he’s searching through a file cabinet behind his eyes. He opens them and looks at Wilbo.

“Her name means she who walks with a limp.”

These words are hard and troublesome. Wilbo wishes he hadn’t heard them. “Well, that’s not a very good meaning.”

“Sure it is.” Blue Lake replies. He straightens out his body to its full height. His head almost touches the eaves. He rolls his head in a slow circle, working out the kinks. He leans back on the railing. “Everyone walks with a limp. It takes courage to do it outwardly.”

Wilbo ponders this tidbit. Sure, it sounds wise, but it doesn’t seem to fit.

“She doesn’t walk with a limp.” he says. “She’s a dancer. She’s graceful. She’s light on her feet. She’s young.”

“There you go.” A sly little smile turns up the corners of Levon’s mouth. “We get our names for a reason. Sometimes we have to grow into them.”

At first these words draw a blank. They speak of the future, and it’s hard to think of the future. It hasn’t happened yet. But after a period of silence he feels a little wave of emotion, a brief, heartstrung tug of tenderness, like something a mother might feel when sending her child off to college for the first time. It passes quickly and he lets it go without comment.

A longer time passes. The shadows deepen. The setting sun makes one last appearance and throws long slanted yellow beams through the forest, glancing off certain glass objects while others remain subdued in the blue shadows. A golden-haired dog strolls up from somewhere and presents its ears for Blue Lake to scratch. After much scratching it grunts its appreciation, ascends the porch steps and climbs up into the porch swing where it lays its head down with a sigh on Opal’s lap.

“So…why do the salamanders cross the road?” Wilbo asks. The question makes him laugh. It sounds like he’s asking a tired old riddle, hoping for a brand new answer.

“They’re spawning.” Blue Lake replies. “These are the males that are crossing now. The females will go in a few weeks. They’ll go to meet their boyfriends in the marshes by the beach.”
“
They stopped crossing when I was coming up here.”

Levon nods. “They stop when the sun gets low. But it’s still not safe to drive. There’s always a few who don’t stop. What would Carl call them? The eccentrics…”

Wilbo ponders. “Like us then. The eccentrics.”

Levon’s reply is uncharacteristically immediate. “You think a lot about that, don’t you Wilbo. How you differ. From the pattern of the world.”

Wilbo’s retort is just as immediate. “Don’t you?”

Blue Lake closes his eyes. There’s a moment where he is standing on the porch with his eyes closed, and Opal is sitting on the porch swing, scratching the dog behind the ears. Opal is the next to speak.

“It’s more important how you differ from the pattern of yourself.”

Immediately Wilbo remembers something Carl said, just the night before. People don’t change when they get older. They just become who they always were, only more so. The time when someone changes into something else as they grow older- that’s the stuff of legends. It amazes him that he can remember this, out of all the other things that Carl said last night.

Levon speaks next. “Tell me more about this girl,” he says.

Wilbo’s thoughts are far from Claudia at this moment. Claudia is like a burning sensation in his loins. Claudia is like an alarm clock waking him up to a strange scene, a landscape, a bed in a cabin beside a lake with tall alpine mountains rising in the morning mist, reflected in the lake, shimmering, a broken reflection, a wind across the water, the reflection of the mountains broken on the surface of the lake.

Claudia! What can he say about her? She is a mystery. But she isn’t that mysterious. Not really. She is a rich girl from Los Angeles. Her father works for Warner Brothers. She is looking for an older man to help her get wild. To help her let go. Onto the scene she bursts with razzle dazzle, a great clumsy exuberance and a full keg of sensuality, enough to impregnate the expanding universe. Claudia!

But before that. Before Claudia, or swirling with Claudia in the maelstrom of events of the past two days, breaking like a stamping horse into the repetitive pattern of three layered years. Arno, his little brother, with his crazed demand. A skunk offering an amulet as a talisman for the coming changes. A mysterious phosphorescent presence behind the arched rocks, calling him into the waves. Floyd Collins in his recurring grief, soothed by the magic song and propelled into a newness of action by Doralina Steindl Klaus who brought Amanda, the patron saint of lunch meat, out of the closet. A stream of salamanders, crossing the road, throwing him into the eccentric of the wheel, conditioning him for this moment, this cathedral-like moment, standing before Levon Blue Lake Moon, pondering the request: tell me more about this girl.

“I don’t know, Blue Lake,” he says at last. “Maybe it’s something more than just a girl.”

Levon nods. “I could have told you that.”

Wilbo sighs. It’s a weary sigh but it’s not an endless weariness. It’s more like an expulsion of air as the weariness is being pressed out by something much larger, some large and awesome thing rearing up inside, like a big brown bear waking up from hibernation. When he opens his mouth to speak he is startled by the flow of words.

“I used to wobble. It used to be all wobble. My dad went missing in 1961. He was part of the Manhattan Project. We lived in Livermore. He worked on the atomic bomb. One day he just drove off in the car and never came back. I think he told something to my mom but she never let on. She never really tried to find him. There was a silent understanding. Even today nobody knows if he’s dead or alive. Mom won’t talk about it. She gets this funny sad little smile. But to me it was the end of the world. Not just my world. The whole world. I read books about prophecy, ancient prophecy. The Hebrews, the Mayans, the Hopis, Nostradamus. I decided it was the bomb that would be the agent by which the world would be destroyed, to fulfill the ancient prophecies. I had this weird hunch that dad knew this too, that’s why he left.
But then suddenly it broke open. Suddenly there were wobblers everywhere, big time wobblers. That first human be-in in the park, the psychedelics, the Mime Troupe, the communes, the Diggers. Like the earth, moving into a whole new field of cosmic energy, you have two choices, go with it or be destroyed. The new children dance! I am young! Life is change! How it differs from the rocks! Those were the happiest days of my life. We were doing things that didn’t have a name yet. Suddenly it all made sense, There was hope. There was a meaning for everything, even the bomb. The bomb had come so we would leave the path and strike out in a new direction. Stupid hippies!”

The last two words are like a derailed locomotive hurling off a cliff over a rocky chasm. They echo once in the tall pines and then they are swallowed up by the silence of the forest. Wilbo repeats them, but this time quietly, mournfully.

“Stupid hippies… You went out of control. You completely abandoned your code of ethics. Floyd is right. Personal hygiene! That’s what it all boils down to. Personal hygiene. I think I was already beginning to see that when I took this job. I think at first the job was a ministry, another way to wobble. I would be a thorn in the side of the establishment. I would be a guerrilla on the sidewalk. I would be an art form. But it didn’t take long for it to break down. There was no movement, like Carl says, no movement. All the freaks in town, just sitting around in the Dogfish every night drinking and talking about how it used to be. And the hippies in the hills, no personal hygiene. Hepatitis. And the rock stars, all of them, phonies, the great phony, Neil Young stopped off at the Lighthouse and ordered a vanilla milkshake. The Lighthouse. Jesus Freaks. She doesn’t know it yet. I wonder when she’ll find out. Jesus freaks…”

He stops talking abruptly, as if he has hit a wall of silence. He listens to his own words rattle around in his head for a while until they simmer down and finally fall silent. So many words for such an empty mind! He enters into a short period of amnesia where he can’t seem to recall anything he’s been saying. Then he remembers.

“Everything is changing, Levon.” he blurts out. “Everything. It feels like my life is being washed away. Frankly, I’m a little scared.”

For the first time since this conversation started, Levon moves. He stands up straight and picks up the glass heron from the porch railing. He holds it up against the fading sunlight and studies it with first one eye closed, then the other. He runs his finger over the shape of the bird until he reaches the tip of the beak where he very gently pinches off a tiny glass spur. He sets the heron down, turns and takes the empty foil and tumbler from Wilbo’s lap.

“That’s because you fight it,” he tells him. “You’ve been fighting it for a long time. When you fight it, it’s difficult. But when you let it go, it just happens. It’s supposed to happen.”

After that he disappears into the house. This is a sign for the yellow dog who perks up on Opal’s lap, hops off the porch swing and follows his master into the house. His paws make tapping sounds on the hardwood floor. There’s the brief sound of water running, then the slobbery lapping sound of a dog drinking water.

Then there’s a breath of silence- just a breath, before the next sound begins.

The next sound is the voice of Opal Moon, singing. There is no prelude to the sound of her voice, no formal introduction, other than the breath of silence. Maybe the breath of silence was the sound of Opal, taking a breath to sing. Regardless, Opal begins to sing in a voice pure and high and shrill, erasing thought, commanding attention.

The sure provisions of my God attend me all my days,
Oh may thy house be mine abode and all my works be praise.
There would I find a settled rest while others go and come
No more a stranger nor a guest but like a child at home…

When she finishes the song there is another breath of silence, like the one at the beginning, except this one flows out, so the song is framed on both sides by an in-breath and an out-breath. After that the ordinary sounds fill back in, the birds in the trees, an airplane in the sky, Levon in the kitchen washing pots and pans. Wilbo feels no compulsion to move and apparently neither does Opal. The moment flows on for a long, long time.

CHAPTER TWELVE: WILBO TAKES A DAY OFF

copyright 2009 by Jim Nail

Clouds roll in while he sleeps. In the morning the sky is colorless and a light mist of rain is falling. He wakes up feeling groggy and his head is pounding. It’s worse than a hangover- there’s no faint reminder of intoxication.

He gets up, gets dressed, heats the water, prepares the coffee, but he does not drink it. His skin cries out to be clean. His body itches where the clothing touches it. He puts on his hooded windbreaker and pulls the hood over his head. He grabs a handful of change from the money bag and stuffs it in his pocket. He leaves the coffee cooling on the counter, leaves the house, locks the door, and starts for town.

In the public showers, he’s alone-that’s a good thing- and the floors are dry; no one’s been there yet- plenty of hot water. He doesn’t know what time it is, and he doesn’t care. He’s taking the day off.

Standing passively in the shower, he allows the water to work its magic, washing away not only the grime, but also the weariness and the ennui, and the heavy silted layers of unremembered dreams and undigested impressions. Soon he’s feeling fresh and invigorated, ready for adventure. He has the day off. He’s made lots of money. He can do whatever he wants. Like the skunk said, he can do something new.

Dry and naked, he contemplates his clothing. They’re full of the sand he came in with. Too bad he didn’t think to bring a change. For a moment he has a crazy thought. What if I just left my clothes in here and walked out naked? But no. Maybe that’s a little too new. Besides, it’s raining. Instead, he turns the pants and shirt inside out and slaps them soundly against the wall to knock out most of the sand.

At the Burger Shack, Mac nods at Wilbo’s entrance and starts for the icebox where he keeps the freeze dried hash browns. But Wilbo stops him.

“Lemme see the menu, Mac. Think I’ll try something else today. And I’m paying. I made a lot of money yesterday.” He pulls himself onto the stool at the counter where the little toy oyster will snap up any coin you place on its shell for the March of Dimes.

Mac tosses a menu on the formica. “How much money, Wilbo?” he asks. “You know, I’m pretty expensive.”

Wilbo runs his finger down the list of breakfast items. Denver omelets and Belgian French toast, spicy Cajun scrambles, German potato pancakes, poached eggs with Swiss cheese on an English muffin. It’s a veritable trip around the world all right, but somehow nothing sounds quite as good as the usual: two eggs, over medium, crispy hash browns, a slab of Italian sausage drenched in grilled onions.

“Oh, I guess I just have the usual,” he finally admits, “Except, make the eggs sunny side up. And bring me a cup of coffee. And I’m still paying.”

Mac already has the coffee pot in his hand. He fills the upturned and empty cup at Wilbo’s place.

“Hard to teach an old dog new tricks.” he says. “Hey Wilbo, where’s your stuff? You came in empty-handed.”

“I’ve taken the day off, Mac. I told you I made a lot of money yesterday.”

Mac opens the icebox. “You won’t know what to do, man. You’re a slave to the routine. I predict you’ll be back at your corner, drawing pictures by four o’clock this afternoon.”

He throws a mound of onions on the grill and the room fills with the spatter and the smell.

“Nope.” Wilbo lifts his coffee cup. “I mean it. I’m taking the day off.” Then his eye focuses on something on the wall. It’s where Mac pins up all his pictures, the ones the tourists bring in. This is a new one, and it’s a picture of Claudia. He feels his nerves jump and immediately he thinks, is she naked? But no, she’s not naked. She’s wearing the blue dress, and she’s doing that little snake thing she does with her hands.

“Hey Mac, when did that one come in?” He nods to the picture. “That new one. The one of the girl.”

Mac looks up from the grill. “Oh, This morning. About an hour ago. Some punk kid brought it in. He wanted to sell it to me. I said no man, people bring these pictures in, gratis complimentis, or not at all. This is the Wilbo museum. Finally he just gave it to me and walked out. He didn’t pay for his burger.”

Wilbo nods. “You let that go?”

“Yeah. I let that go. I let a lot of things go. Hey, here’s your breakfast.”

So Wilbo enjoys his breakfast, the usual, gratis complimentis. He has every intention of paying, but Mac won’t let him.

“It would be just too weird, Wilbo. It would upset the cosmic balance.”

Slipping off the counter stool, his eyes lock in on the picture of Claudia on the wall. Suddenly the implications strike him with a wave of dread. He realizes they were festering in the back of his mind all through breakfast. As he steps out of the shack into the rainy street, he feels dizzy and he stumbles once.

How did he get the picture? When was it drawn?

Was it the same guy?

He looks up the street toward the boardwalk. Even with the light rain falling, people are beginning to mill about. He locates his place of employment, the sidewalk in front of the bumper cars. Two winos are sitting on the bench, elbows on knees, staring vacantly out into the day, a brown paper bag between them. They sit so still and sepia-colored, they could be a painted backdrop, while all around them motion and life swirl in cheerful hues. Men and women. Out of habit he focuses on one person after another, looking for a likely target.

A girl emerges from the crowd, subdued dress, red hair- it’s Claudia! But no, of course it’s not Claudia, don’t be silly. It doesn’t look a bit like Claudia. But there’s another girl, walking away from him, slim, and meandering pensively, blue parka with the hood pulled up. That could be any girl! What is he doing? He turns away.

I’m taking the day off. Don’t know where I’ll go, but I’m not going to the boardwalk.

Facing the empty street that leads to town, away from the midway, he feels something like a mass of kinetic energy at his back, like the spattering of onions on a hot grill, like the snakes on the head of Medusa, writhing in every direction, like a wild and happy audience, stamping and clapping and calling out for an encore. The temptation to turn back is overwhelming, but no! He won’t do it. I’m taking a day off! With firm resolve he steps into the wet empty street.

The first thing he notices is a commotion, an unexpected gathering of people. The territory around the boardwalk is so well-worn and familiar to him that he immediately registers anything out of the ordinary, even if it’s just in his unconscious mind. There are people standing on a corner where people don’t normally stand around. He feels curious. he draws closer.

It’s a bunch of hippies, hanging around a corner lot. Old guard hippies, he thinks. Even from a distance he senses this. It’s in their movements- slow, languid motions, none of the unbridled enthusiasm of the very young. They’re just hanging out, that’s all, waiting for the next big thing. It’s a little be-in, a lonesome remnant of the big be-ins of the sixties. As he gets closer the details fill in. There’s music, someone playing conga drums, someone banging out chords on a guitar. Some people are sitting on a bench or a log, acting a little silly, rocking back and forth. There’s a circle of five or six locked in a communal embrace, swaying slightly as one. Drawing closer he recognizes the costumes, thrift store clothes, draped and wrapped and patched and soiled. Most of the men have full beards and long uncombed hair. The women are a little plump and bleary-eyed. There are several children, some of them naked.

One of the figures catches his eye. It’s a woman, standing very still, one arm outstretched in an improbable gesture, her back arched. Her hair is punked; she wears a leather halter top and hot pants, a gold chain of charms and baubles slung low around her waist. As Wilbo approaches she remains frozen, motionless, like a mannequin. In fact she is a mannequin. Wilbo stops suddenly in his tracks. The recognition funnels into him like tawny port into an empty bottle. He sees what he didn’t see at first. Her outstretched arm leans into a crude wooden sign. It’s hard to tell whether the woman is holding up the sign or the sign is holding up the woman.

COLLINS PROPERTIES
SINCE 1963
FINDING REAL ESTATE FOR NORMAL PEOPLE LIKE YOU.

“Hey, big brother, what’s happening?” A voice breaks into Wilbo’s reverie. The man’s face is completely covered with a coarse black beard. He wears thick-lensed glasses and a dirty denim jacket. “Hey, do I know you? You look familiar, man. Did you used to hang out in Sebastopol?”

“Nope. Never been to Sebastopol.” Wilbo thrusts out his hands to shake. “Wilbo Hoegarden. Realism and Surrealism. I’ve drawn…” But then he stops himself. His spiel is meaningless without the props.

“Cisco,” says the man, “Cisco Austin, like Cisco Houston, only Austin. Same state, different city. We just got off of Morningstar, me and Lemonade.” He nods to a woman, sitting on a guitar case, nursing a baby. “I mean, we left early because they were going to be busted. Hey, we didn’t do it, man. We didn’t fink. We were just warned in advance. By the Oracle.” Cisco leans into Wilbo’s face and glances around to see if anyone is listening. “There’s an Oracle in the trees, you know.”

Wilbo nods. “I know about that oracle. He tends to be a little sappy.”

Cisco doesn’t catch the joke. His gaze seems to be scanning the tops of the trees over the houses across the street. “We’re going to buy some property. It just came together out of the blue, this morning, like the gathering of the tribes. We all arrived here at once. Some of us are from Morningstar. Others just came down out of the hills. We don’t know each other, we just came together, out of the blue. We saw the sign.”

“Oh, you mean the sign. That one. For normal people like you.”

“Yeah, that’s the one. Normal people.”

Wilbo nods again. It’s definitely a time for nodding, this one. Pieces of a puzzle are rapidly falling together in his head but the picture they are forming is a strange one.

“It’s the woman, isn’t it? That woman. The woman pointing to the sign.”

Cisco’s eyes rest on the mannequin and he smiles benevolently. “Her name is Amanda,” he intones. “She’s the patron saint of lunch meat.”

Just then there’s a whoop of voices from a small group of people standing on the steps to Floyd’s office. Suddenly the air is filled with little bits of paper, fluttering down like winged alder seeds.

“They’re tearing up their birth certificates,” Cisco explains. “We’re all born again.”

A voice pipes up from the side, a woman’s voice. “Hey, I know you. You were there last night. At the church.” Wilbo turns. It’s the woman he saw last night at the Lighthouse, the woman with the tabla and the little white dog, and Claudia was dancing. He doesn’t see the dog anywhere.

“You mean at the Lighthouse.”

“Yeah, the Lighthouse. Praise Jesus!” She throws up her hands. Wilbo suddenly feels so uncomfortable that he just has to walk away. He walks straight into the crowd, across the parking lot. At the center of the crowd a man is juggling three bowling pins, a circle of people gathered around him. He juggles very poorly. At any given time two bowling pins are in the air and one is on the ground. Wilbo stops and watches him for a moment, then he turns around and retraces his steps. He pushes past a beardless boy playing a pennywhistle and two dogs at a tug of war with the tattered remnant of an American flag. He goes straight back to Cisco who is now face to face with Amanda at the sign, one arm on her shoulder.

“Hey Cisco, how are you gonna buy this property, anyhow? Who’s got the money?”

Cisco seems a little off guard. He drops his hand from Amanda’s shoulder and wheels around with his back to her, as if protecting her from bandits. It seems to take him a moment before he recognizes Wilbo.

“Oh, the money,” he says at last. “Oh, there’s always money. Money is everywhere! Besides, the man here, he’s going to help us. The man inside.”

“You mean Floyd.”

“Yeah, Floyd. The man inside.”

Wilbo takes leave of Cisco and heads for Floyd’s office. The door is wide open but the way is barred by the people on the steps. They have run out of birth certificates and now they are onto dollar bills. Actually only one of them is tearing up dollar bills, the tall man in the middle. The others are just passing dollar bills around, throwing them up in the air, catching them, passing them around. The tall man holds up his hand at Wilbo’s approach.

“If you want in it costs you a dollar,” he says. His shirt pocket is stuffed and bulging with crumpled dollar bills. There’s a dollar bill rolled like a cigarette wedged behind his right ear.

“Well, that makes about as much sense as anything else.” Wilbo stuffs his hand in his pocket but of course there are no dollar bills in there, only a generous fistful of loose change. “You’ll have to take it in silver.” He pulls out what fits between his fingers and thrusts it at the man who looks perplexed, then takes the coins and steps aside.

Inside the office there are more people, people sitting on the floor; a woman has laid out a spread of tarot cards, a couple of people are playing jacks under the philodendrons, someone is blowing soap bubbles. Bob Dylan whines from the speakers, The Times They are a-Changing, Pot smoke rises from a burning reefer in the ashtray. Floyd sits behind his desk discussing some documents with a huge pony-tailed man whose body pours like lava over a footstool in front of the desk. Wilbo glances up at the side window behind the vines. It is wide open.

Floyd looks up and his face breaks into a big smile. “And there he is!” he cries. “The man, himself!”

“No, Floyd, you’re the man,” Wilbo counters. “That’s what they told me out there. You’re the man inside.”

Floyd laughs and laughs. He’s acting a little silly but he’s clearly sober. “See, I was right about the future, Wilbo. It’s blue and egg-shaped. Just like I told Doralina last night.”

“Wow. You can remember saying that?”

“Of course I remember saying it. Why shouldn’t I? I remember everything about last night. You played the magic song and I remembered the future. Then Doralina went out the window.”

“You remember Doralina going out the window?”

“Yeah, that’s the most important part. Doralina had to go out the window so she could get Amanda out of the closet.”

Wilbo catches his breath. Again! he thinks to himself, Doralina’s logic supercedes the pattern of the world. “But Floyd,” he says, “Can these people really buy real estate? Do they have money?”

“Money? What’s that? Money is just information. These people are well informed, Wilbo. Francis here, he’s got a contract with Simon and Schuster. He’s writing the next Tibetan Book of the Dead. He’s good buddies with Jerry. And there’s people out there from Morningstar, ready to learn from their mistakes.” Floyd laces his fingers together and grins. “It’s the dawning of the age of personal hygiene.”

Wilbo shares his grin. “And Amanda out there, I suppose she’s the patron saint of lunch meat.”
Francis the future author reaches his massive arm to the ashtray and picks up the joint. He turns to Wilbo.

“You wanna hit?”

Wilbo considers briefly, then declines. “Floyd, I’m going to leave you to your business. You’ve clearly got work to do and I don’t. I’m taking the day off. I made a lot of money yesterday, so I’m taking the day off.”

Floyd takes the joint from Francis’ hand. “Oh yeah, that’s right. You told me last night. You met this girl.” He takes a drag from the joint and speaks through a smoke-filled outbreath. “I remember everything.”

Outside the crowd is warming up in the noonday sun. a few more guitars have joined the music, a few more drummers. People are milling, voices are more animated. Children trailing colored foil streamers weave in and out among the forest of legs. Wilbo hops down the steps through a shower of dollar bill fragments. Cisco spots him at once. He pushes away from Amanda and slithers through the crowd, rolling his head from side to side like a big fuzzy tennis ball.

“Well, did you see the man?” He rests his hand lightly on Wilbo’s arm.

“Yeah, I know that man. That’s Floyd Collins. He’s my friend. We drink together just about every night at the Dogfish.”

“What did I tell you, man? It’s the gathering of the tribes. It’s finally happening. We’re gonna get our land back.”

Wilbo leans in close to speak to Cisco directly, an idea that just pops into his head.

“Floyd said he had one thing he wanted me to tell you. Just two words. It’s like a message from the Oracle.”

Cisco’s face gets suddenly very serious. “What are they?”

Wilbo enunciates deliberately. “Personal hygiene.”

At that moment there’s a crunching sound on the gravel behind them. Shaken from the solemnity of the moment, both men spin around at once. A very dilapidated Plymouth sedan has hobbled into the parking lot. It has so many dents it looks like a crumpled piece of waste paper. Each of the four doors is a different color and the body yet another color, all of the colors rust-stained and peeling. Out-of-state license plates: West Virginia. A single word painted in bright orange across the hood: GANGA. The driver’s window rolls down and a brown face emerges, framed by a halo of wiry locks. The man’s hair is so wide it won’t fit into the window opening but spills out across the windshield and over the seat back. Next to him sits a petite woman in a brightly colored dress. In the back seat an uncountable number of small children are thrashing about.

“Good morning, good friends.” the man announces himself in a strong Jamaican accent. “Perhaps you can help us. We’ve been traveling now for twenty-seven days. Taking the back roads. It’s a beautiful country you have here, this America. But we are ready to settle down. We’re just looking for a home.”

Wilbo laughs out loud. This is all too much. The gathering of the tribes, indeed! He suddenly feels an urgent need to get away, not because it’s a bad thing. It’s just too much.

“You gotta see the man inside,” he says through his laughter. “Talk to Cisco here, he’ll help you.”

Just before he turns to go he glances at the car. One of the children in the back seat catches his eye, a little boy with a dirty face and a head of hair as wide as his father’s. He flashes a big smile and waves. Wilbo waves back. The boy waves again. Wilbo waves again. For a moment there’s a little Kinko Syncho Quinto thing going on. Then the car door flies open and the children start tumbling out. Wilbo turns and faces the road ahead with a renewed interest in where it might lead him.

CHAPTER ELEVEN: VISITORS FROM HERE AND THERE

copyright 2009 by Jim Nail

He reaches the notch in the cement wall and steps through. There it is! The ocean! The smell of it, the sound of it, its fine, cool moisture on his face and on his arms. He inhales deeply and it fills his lungs. How many years did he live without it, not even knowing of its existence, let alone experiencing its presence, its power, its ability to bring truth and meaning to everything else in life- to work and play and friendship and sleep and death and food and drink? No wonder all those years he was so lost and confused. There was no ocean.

He climbs up to the crest on the trail where a short tunnel, blasted through the rock separates the public beach from the stretch of sand where he lives. On the other side, he scans the horizon. The moon is bright and the sky is cloudless. The breakers are blue with moonlight and maybe just a hint of phosphorus. The tide is coming in. He can see his weird little cabin off in the distance, lit by moonlight, nestled in the cove.

Then he sees something else. A tiny wisp of smoke is rising from the fire circle, rising straight up into the windless night, and even from this distance he detects the very faint glow of embers. He quickens his pace. Company! Who could it be? He follows the trail down to the edge of the sand where it winds through a bed of ancient fallen logs worn smooth by waves and stable enough to host the suggestion of a trail. His heart is light with happy expectation. Company is a good thing! Company is always a good thing. Anyone who comes to see him in his own home is a welcome sight, indeed.

He slows down as he approaches the cove and tries to make out the shadowy form seated on the log by the fire. Large of bulk, hunched of posture, motionless and calm, it could only be one man.

“Hey, Carl.” he says as he enters the firelight. “Welcome. How long you been here?”

“Not too long,” Carl intones. “Couple of hours. ‘Bout as long as you haven’t been here. I stopped by the Dogfish. You weren’t there either, which I thought was strange. So I came here.”

Wilbo sets his pad and pencils down on the porch. He sets his concertina case down on the pad, so the pictures inside won’t blow away. He takes a few sticks of driftwood from the pile and tosses them on the fire. The sparks whirl and fly.

“So, Wilbo,” says Carl, “What you got to drink around here?”

Wilbo smiles, happy to have a satisfactory answer to that question. “How ‘bout some Almaden Tawny Port? That just about oughta hit the spot right now.”

Carl nods, solemnly. “Yep. That just about oughta.”

Wilbo unlocks the door, enters the house, and fumbles around under the bed until his hand caresses the long skinny neck of the bottle. He pulls it out, pops the cork and breathes in the warm welcoming aroma. He takes two stoneware mugs out of the cupboard and fills each one to the brim. The bottle is completely drained.

Outside, Carl takes his cup with a grunt of appreciation. In respect for the man’s girth and commanding presence, Wilbo surrenders the entire length of the bench, sitting politely instead on a smaller chunk of driftwood opposite the fire.

“Your brother stopped by the Dogfish tonight,” Carl announces. “Said he was looking for you.”

This tidbit of information rattles Wilbo, just a little.

“Oh yeah? What did he look like? Was he drunk?”

“Sober as a monkey on a bicycle,” Carl replies. “Even wearing a tie and a white shirt. Tucked in.”

Wilbo frowns, as if this is bad news. “Well, what made him think I’d be there?”

Carl glances up. “Same thing that made all of us think you’d be there. It’s where you usually are at that time of night. Kind of mysterious, actually.” He takes a sip from his cup.

They sit quietly and stare into the fire for a while, for a long time in fact. It’s that kind of scene, the kind where you can sit quietly and stare into a fire for a long time, comfortably, even when there are uncomfortable issues at stake.

“I met this girl.” Wilbo says, eventually.

Carl nods. “Oh. I see.”

“She’s very young... I mean, I think she’s too young.”

“Uh huh.” Carl takes another drink of his wine. “Why don’t you bring her down to the Dogfish sometime and let me look at her? I’ll tell you if she’s too young.”

“Well, I think maybe she’s… too young to take into the Dogfish. I mean, legally.”

Carl chews on that one for a while. “Oh,” he says, “That young.”

Then they’re comfortably silent some more. The waves crash and recede. A grouping of little terns skitter about on the sand.

“That’s an interesting development, Wilbo.”

“It’s interesting.” Wilbo agrees. His thoughts are swirling, but they’re swirling slowly. He has time to look at each one of them as they swirl by. It’s a good thing about this kind of moment. He can look at his thoughts as they swirl by. He can take his time and form them in his mind until they make some sense, and he’s ready to articulate them.

Finally he says, “You’ve got to have a code of ethics, Carl. I’ve said that before.”

Carl agrees. “You’ve said that before.”

“You can’t just do anything you want. Maybe you could, but you can’t anymore.”

Carl shakes his head. “Nope. Not anymore.”

“That’s what she was asking me. The difference between being young and being old. But I couldn’t put it into words. Not then. But you know what it is. It’s a code of ethics. That’s the difference. When you’re young, you just do stuff, just to see what happens. But when you get older, it matters, what you do. You don’t want to do just anything. You don’t have that much time. Time is precious. You want to be sure you do the right thing. You may not get another chance.” Wilbo picks up his cup of wine, sniffs it, then sets it down without tasting it. An annoying memory has drifted, unbidden, into his mind. “She told me I was old fashioned, like somebody’s grandfather. That’s what she said. What does she know about that? What does she know about a code of ethics?”

Carl shifts his weight on the bench, slowly, deliberately. He passes through a phase of visible discomfort. He winces once and his breathing becomes labored. Finally he finds a new position that works- same as the old position, except that he faces a different direction. He waits until his breathing stabilizes. Then he takes another sip of wine.

“Well, from my experience, people don’t change when they get older,” he says at last. They just become who they always were, only more so. The times when someone changes into someone else as they grow older- that’s the stuff of legends. Wilbo, I suspect you’ve had this code of ethics ever since you were a little boy. I suspect you were raised with it. I suspect you haven’t really thought about it in the last few years. Not deeply.”

“Why do you say that, Carl?”

“Well, what is it, this code of ethics? Have you written it down? Have you made it into a litany? Can you recite it as a creed?”

Wilbo considers this for a while but his thoughts come up with nothing concrete.

“You’re the bookworm, Carl. You know it better than I do. It’s been written down a zillion times. There’s the Golden Rule. There’s the Fourfold Path of Right Action, there’s the Mosaic Laws. There’s the Hippocratic Oath.”

Carl chuckles and sips his wine. “That’s what I’m talking about, Wilbo. You defer to the common culture. You can’t tell me what your personal code of ethics is. I’ll tell you what your personal code of ethics is. I’ve said this before. I said it just last night. You make fun of people and you favor women. That’s your personal code of ethics.”

This accusation doesn’t have any personal punch for Wilbo. It’s just Carl, playing with ideas, like he always does.

“People are fools, all of them. They need me to make fun of them. They’re like sheep except that there’s no shepherd. The shepherd is dead but they still follow him. They follow his ghost. And women are more beautiful than men, so I favor them. Can you blame me? Isn’t that what I said last night? And then the hippies. Those stupid hippies. They had it right to begin with. They realized the shepherd was dead. But then they just went completely out of control. They had no code of ethics whatsoever. They just did whatever they felt like doing, with no thought of what was right.”

Carl turns his head slowly until he’s looking Wilbo square in the face. “Well, what about us, then? Your friends at the Dogfish. Are we just fools, too?”

“Of course not, Carl. We’re the eccentrics. We wobble outside the wheel, like we were talking about last night. Although I don’t know that we’re doing that much wobbling really. Mostly we just sit around and drink and talk about it. Maybe Floyd, he’s trying to do something with his real estate business. And of course there’s Doralina…”

For a moment Wilbo slips into a reverie, like a short film projected across the screen of his mind. Floyd Collins, in his office, is slumped over his desk with an empty Southern Comfort bottle in his hands. Then he gets up and knocks a plant off the shelf and opens the closet door and there’s a woman in the closet and he closes the door and Doralina climbs out the window. It all happens quickly, like time lapse photography. What was she up to, Doralina, climbing out the window like that? Wilbo has never known Doralina to start something that led nowhere.

In a long, drawn-out gesture, heavy with world-weariness, Carl produces a tattered red bandana from his pocket and blows his nose soundly and thoroughly into it, wringing out his nostrils and combing his moustache with it, before replacing it in his pocket.

“They were a movement, Wilbo, the hippies. If you study history you’ll see there’s always been movements of people who go against the grain. They rise up and they push the consciousness forward a little, but then they fall apart. They always fall apart. Sometimes they go bad before they fall apart, like the Nazis, so the bad overpowers any good they might have done in the first place. But there’s always good, and they always fall apart. That’s what Hoffer says if I read him right. Look at the Knights Templar. They renounced the cruelty of the Crusades and set up a mystical order of the highway. Saint Columba of Ireland. He broke away from the aristocratic priesthood of the O’Neils, and established a spiritual community on the island of Iona, based on the ancient and feminist Brehan laws. The Quakers. They were thrown in jail and even executed in seventeenth century England, just because they refused to swear an oath in a court of law. Think about the Utopians in New England. The Oneida Commune. The Transcendentalists. Think about… Henry David Thoreau. Mahatma Gandhi. Aurobindo and his wackly Hindus down in Pondicherry. Hell Wilbo, you ought to hitchhike down to Arizona sometime and see what Soleri and his people are up to in Arcosanti. Even the hippies. You can’t blame them for trying something new. Hoffer doesn’t trust movements, I don’t think, for all his talk. He calls them all mass movements. He says there’s good and bad mass movements, like Nazism or the Catholic Church. But I don’t think he goes far enough. I’m a firm believer in movements, Wilbo. Some of them, anyhow.”

The man does know his books, Wilbo thinks to himself. But he’s not sure how to fit all this with what he’s been talking about, and he’s not sure how what he’s been talking about has anything to do with Claudia.

Claudia!

“So I met this girl.” he says.

“Yeah. I believe you mentioned that. What are you gonna do about it?”

Wilbo picks up a stick and stirs the fire. He taps the coals and breaks up some big chunks into little chunks. He smooths out a ridge of fiery orange into a plain of glowing amber.

“Nothing.” he says at last. “Nothing in particular. Just roll with the punches, I guess. I don’t even know why I brought it up. You meet girls every day.”

Carl chuckles. “Maybe you do.” he says and he raises his cup. Just before he sips he stops. It’s like he’s making a decision. Oh, what the hell? his gesture says, and he drains the cup dry.

“You got any more of this stuff?” he asks.

Wilbo glances down at his own mug, untouched and still full to the brim, wedged in the sand against a rock.. “Nope. Just what I’m working on myself.”

This information seems to cause Carl some discomfort. He sets his cup down on the bench and lumbers through several different positions, finally settling on one, resting his wrists on his knees and curving his shoulders forward.

“You spend too much time alone, Wilbo. That’s your problem.”

“I don’t know where you get that. I haven’t been alone all day. Or yesterday. Or the day before that, as far as I can remember.”

“I don’t mean alone like… you know, alone, where there’s no people. I mean alone with your thoughts. You keep your thoughts to yourself, Wilbo.”

Wilbo thinks about this, to himself. Carl looks at him and nods his head several times. He leans back slightly, then leans forward, slightly. He repeats these motion a few times until he’s got a little rocking thing going, like a porch swing, or a pair of lumberjacks at a two-handled saw. Eventually he gains sufficient momentum to propel himself awkwardly to his feet. Erect, but shaky, he brushes the sand off his jacket and cracks his knuckles.

“You might want to think about what I said, Wilbo. About movements. You don’t have to be alone, you know. With your thoughts, I mean. You’re not the only one who thinks this way. Come back to the Dogfish tomorrow night and we’ll talk about it. Bring the girl if you want. We’ll find a way to get her in.”

Wilbo stands because Carl is standing. He’s glad to be on his feet. The little chunk of driftwood doesn’t have near the ergonomics of the ancient and well-worn bench. For awhile they stand there in silence, two comfortable old friends who rarely agree, in no hurry to part company. The sounds of the ocean nicely fill in the silence. The two figures standing by the fire begin to sway slightly. It’s not because of the wind; there is no wind. It’s more like an invisible music with invisible rhythms. It’s more like two invisible musics, each of the two figures swaying to a separate rhythm.

Finally Carl clears his throat. “Welp. Guess I’d better be gettin’ back. It’s a long walk for this old bag of bones.”

“I wish I could take you in my Corvette, Carl.” Wilbo replies. They both laugh. Then they shake hands and Carl steps away from the fire. Wilbo remains standing, watching him as he completes the entire distance of the beach and disappears into the tunnel on the cliff. This takes about twenty minutes.

Wilbo leans over and picks up his untouched mug of tawny port. He carries it into the house, sets it down on the counter by the empty bottle, and lights a candle. He fumbles through the items on the shelf until he finds something that might work- a small, stone cream pitcher with a pointed spout. Carefully he pours the wine from the mug into the pitcher, and even more carefully he pours it from the pitcher back into the bottle, holding it steady even after it empties, so that the last few drops can roll down the wall. Then he corks the bottle and places it back under the bed.

He takes off his clothes and folds them carefully, even his socks, and prepares for his evening ritual.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Awakened by something, he sits up suddenly in bed. It’s a voice outside. Maybe. Whatever it is, it’s outside.

He brings his weight around and sets his bare feet on the cold wood floor. The cabin is completely dark- not a trace of light enters through the open windows. It must be very late. The moon is down.

What would wake him so soundly like that? He is wide awake- no trailing wisps of glory from the dream world, no heaviness of body, no sluggishness of mind. He throws open the door and peers out into the night.

It’s like there’s nothing out there. He can’t remember when he’s seen the night so dark, and empty and silent. Outside the door there’s just a blank space, an empty room, an open mouth. Without dressing, he steps outside for a closer look.

Immediately he senses one more missing factor, besides sound and light. There is no motion. There’s no wind, there are no little wading birds doing the do se do on the sand, no seagulls cutting the sweep of the horizon, singing their lonesome songs, there’s no colony of seals bobbing and crying on the jagged rocks, there’s no beacon lamp circling and searching the shore from an offshore vessel beyond the waves. Even the waves themselves, though moving, seem strangely static, repetitive, without variation or modulation, like an endless looped filmstrip a landlocked person might watch when he’s lonesome for the sea.

Wilbo steps further out into the night, trying to get closer to what’s happening, trying to make some sense out of it. He gets a strange image: it’s as if, while he slept, the night was rolling on toward that proverbial darkest hour, just before the imperceptible return of the forces of light and activity. But it did not stop there. Somehow it slipped sidewise and kept on going, beyond that point, to a point outside of time where nothing changes, nothing develops, and there’s no way back.

He reaches the water’s edge, the scalloped line left by the last wave, and stands there with his bare feet in the wet sand. Presently the wave returns, licks his toes and heels, then retreats, carving a hollow and drawing sand out from beneath the arch of each foot. He notices that the new wave has left the shore unchanged. It has simply and neatly filled in the contours left by the wave before it.

This is just too weird, he thinks. Something is hiding behind something else.

There is a brief moment where he thinks, Oh, this.

Then he thinks, What do you mean, Oh this? State your case. More clearly.

Then it happens. There’s a shift- inside or outside, he’s not sure, but suddenly there’s a shift- everything changes- and at the same time he experiences a sensation he’s never felt before. It’s none of the five senses; it’s something brand new, and it being brand new, he has no point of reference. He can’t locate it anywhere on the meridians of his body. It’s not in his head. Perhaps it’s in his arms, but perhaps it’s just doing something to his arms, causing them to feel something… armlike. It’s doing things to his stomach too, and his legs, and now his heart is starting to pound, and his breathing is going shallow and strained. One thing is clear- it’s a feeling that requires an action, a response- there is something he is supposed to do about it. And it isn’t optional. His entire field of awareness is overtaken. Although he has no idea what he has to do, he knows he has to do it.

He falls to his knees in the sand, thinking, this is so corny. But what are my choices?

Once on his knees, he senses he has further to go, so he falls prostrate on his face, his hands stretched out before him, tasting the salty, gritty sand between his teeth. In this humiliating position he picks up a clue. It’s a picture of a place, a location, a physical center.

He lifts his head. The first thing he sees are the rocks, the double arched rocks, just offshore. They seem to be glowing. No, the rocks aren’t glowing. There’s something behind the rocks, glowing, a soft bath-like glow- it might be white, it might be blue, he can’t tell for sure. The rocks themselves stand silhouetted against the light. He can see the arch in one rock, with the light shining clear through it. The other arch is hidden from this angle.

Instinctively he finds himself scrambling to his feet and wading out into the water, toward the rocks, toward the light. There’s no thought whatsoever behind his action. His eyes are fixed on the rocks and his body is pulled toward them, like a magnet. A wave rushes in to meet him. It breaks against his knees and the foam splashes up into his face.

His movement slows. The water is icy cold and his feet shout with pain from hard pebbles under the waves. He stops and the water surrounds him. He turns to the rocks.

The glow is fading like a fire doused in water or like a cartoon sun dropped into the sea, faster than a real sunset, slower than the snuffing of a candle. By the time his mind completes these images, the glow is gone and the ocean is dark. He is standing naked in swirling waves feeling suddenly cold and silly and void of the sensation that drove him there in the first place.

He turns around at once and begins to wade back to the shore. Then he stops again.

There’s something there- a suggestion of movement. No, it’s more than a suggestion. There’s something moving. Where the trail meanders through the old fallen driftwood forest, someone is walking, ambling slowly, casually, almost gliding. No, it’s more than one person. It’s two. Attached at the hip and wrapped in each other’s arms, two star-crossed lovers, way past their bedtimes, taking a lover’s stroll across a deserted beach, or so they think.

Mortified by the thought that someone might see him standing there, alone and naked, Wilbo collapses into the water and sits down hard on the sand beneath the waves. But the ocean is inhaling. The waves pull back and suddenly there’s a naked man, sitting on the beach in plain sight, framed by breakers. Quietly, slowly, he rolls onto his belly and flattens his body against the shore, trying to make himself look as much as possible like a log of driftwood. He angles his head so that he can watch the couple advance along the trail.

Their passage is faltering and slow. Perhaps they stop to kiss- he can’t tell from this distance. At one point they separate and the girl runs ahead- at least he thinks it’s the girl. She stops and waits by a post marker in the trail. The man quickens his pace and catches up with her. This time it’s a kiss for sure. Wilbo can hear their voices blowing toward him on the breeze. He can’t hear the words, just the voices, lilting and happy.

It occurs to him: the hour has changed, then. Motion has returned, motion and sound and light. There’s a breeze. There are people walking. There are birds. There are modulations in the sound of the waves.

Just then the next wave strikes his body and engulfs him completely. He has to hold his breath while it does its thing, shifting the sand beneath him and wrapping a garland of seaweed over his back and shoulders. So this is what it feels like to be an inanimate object.

By the time the water has receded, the couple has reached his house. They are very curious about it. No longer entwined, they are exploring it from all angles, peering through the windows, climbing up on the corner frames to examine the pockets of the roof, poking and probing through the composition of the walls. Then one of them discovers that the door is ajar. Wilbo is pretty sure it’s the man. The shadowy figure shoves the door boldly with both hands. The door obliges. The figure disappears into the house.

Wilbo’s first inclination is to jump to his feet and rush the house, but he holds back. It would be quite a scene, he admits, but he’s not ready for that level of comedy. He lays low and watches.

The man comes out of the house. He’s got something in his hands. He takes it to the girl and they examine it together, holding it up between them, holding it up against the dark sky, holding it down against the sand. Wilbo has no idea what it is, but it’s something from his house, and they’re taking it. Does he care? Should he care about this? Should he stop them? He can’t decide. What if it’s his concertina? His bag of money?

He lumbers to his knees, then staggers to his feet just as another wave strikes him from behind and delivers him back to his knees.

He hears their voices again, laughing carelessly. He looks up and sees the girl running, the man chasing her. She keeps looking back and holding something up, as if to taunt him.

All right, that’s enough! No man who is a man would just lie there in the sand and let this sort of thing happen to him, no matter how naked he is. Even completely naked. He gets back to his feet and starts across the beach toward the house, not running, not shouting, still not exactly sure he wants this thing to happen at all. He finds himself assuming a stealthy gait, crouched, fingers splayed, striding singularly from side to side as if he were apprehending an enemy encampment.

The man catches up with the girl and they tussle. He wrestles the stolen object from her grasp and takes off running. She pursues him and their shadows diminish in the distance. Wilbo knows he will have to make some effort if he wants to catch up with them.

Is it worth it? No, maybe not. What’s the point? What could he possibly have that’s worth all that expenditure? He’ll go back in the house, that’s what he’ll do. He’ll assess the situation.
At the door of the house he stops to catch his breath. He feels terrible. He’s winded. His body is covered with sand, sweat and seawater. He stumbles into the house and lights a candle. He draws himself a mug of cold water from the crock and pours it down his throat. He grabs a towel and dry-scrubs his body vigorously from head to foot. Then he looks around the room in the candle glow, taking stock.

The concertina. The money bag. The pencils in their case; the tablet, with the pictures still pressed between the pages. The quilts and pillows. The parchments and prints on the wall. The books on the shelves. The colored glass bottles. The mugs and the cups on the counter. He gets down on his knees and fumbles around under the bed until he finds the bottle. Yep. Still there. Everything of any importance is still in order, as far as he can tell.

He sits on the edge of the bed and the room spins around him a few turns, then it slows and finally settles to a stop.

“What a strange night…” he says out loud, but quietly, not to be heard by anyone. Then he reaches for the money bag on the bedside table, picks it up by the drawstring, shakes it for its jingle, estimates its weight, sets it down.

Maybe I’ll take a day off from work tomorrow. I can afford it. I’ve made a lot of money. That’s what I’ll do. I’ll catch a shower first thing in the morning and then I’ll just… I’ll just take a day off. I’ll just see what happens. I’ll do something else.

He stretches out on his back and lies there for a long time, listening to the surf. Many waves break, in series of sevens. He counts the waves as one might count sheep. He counts them in sevens. Seven waves times seven waves break before he loses count and turns to greet the boatman, John of Dreams.

CHAPTER TEN: CLAUDIA GETS NAKED

Dear readers,
As I mentioned in a previous post, from now on I will post a new chapter regularly on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays until the book is done. This is Chapter Ten. There are 23 chapters so you are approaching the halfway point.
Thanks for staying with me!

Jim

copyright 2009 by Jim Nail

The crowd has dispersed. Claudia stands alone in the street under a street lamp. When he sees her Wilbo feels a jolt, like an aftershock of the first wave he felt back in the coffee-house, back when it all started. It passes quickly but it leaves him breathless and shaking, fighting back an urge to stride boldly over to her, put his arms around her and crush her to his chest.

“Hey, you left me out here by myself with all this money.” she says. “I could have been mugged. I thought you said a woman needs protection.”

“Well, you had the concertina. Some people consider it an instrument of torture.”

She unlocks the door in the wall with a key that hangs from a long thin chain around her neck, and they enter to a flight of ascending stairs. Taking his hand she leads him up the stairs. Each step is painted a different color with the colors gradually shifting through the spectrum, from blue at the bottom through green and yellow and orange and purple to a hot pink at the top. The stairs creak, almost musically, and he gets the strange sensation that each step is tuned to a different note, the stairs as a whole singing him a melody, a hypnotic minor key tune like one that might be sung by mermaids on a rock just offshore. Claudia doesn’t say a word until they reach the door at the top of the stairs. There she lets go of his hand and produces the key from where it has been lying against her skin.

“Well, here we are,” she says, “My little hideaway.” She throws open the door and tosses the key onto the floor.

It’s one big room that fills up the entire second floor of the building. It looks like it might have been used as a warehouse once, or maybe a sewing room. Perhaps once there were dozens of tables with sewing machines in this room, and women, sitting at the sewing machines, turning out little smocks and bloomers. Or maybe there was a rug merchant here with rows and rows of tribal rugs, stacked from floor to ceiling.

Now it’s all just a big room and there’s not much in it. The floors are hard wood, polished bright and shiny. A few area rugs are scattered about. At one end of the room is a queen-sized bed with the covers thrown back. The only light in the room comes from a lamp with a red Chinese shade, on an end table by the bed. A collection of large, unframed art prints graces the walls, Monet’s Water Lilies, some Degas’ ballerinas, and one primitive painting of a band of Australian aborigines, raving it up at a coroboree in the outback. There’s a double sink under a blinded window, dishes in the sink. A small icebox. No stove. A small, round wooden table with a vase of flowers. Two chairs. A free standing wardrobe with the doors open, some lacy, silky underthings hanging from the handle. A record player sits on the floor by the wardrobe, the speakers separated. A burgundy loveseat with three or four embroidered throw pillows. A closed door- it must lead to the bathroom; a pen and ink profile of Bob Dylan on the door. That’s about it. There’s nothing else in the room. No books, no bookshelves, no stacks of papers. No food, except what might be in the icebox. No television. No mirrors.

“Well, what do you think?” she asks. “I haven’t been here very long. But I’ve got room to dance.” With this she leaps into the open room, kicking off her slippers and whirling through a series of spins and glissades that bring her back to Wilbo, gliding to her knees and folding her arms down like the petals of a flower at his feet. Then she’s up, tugging at his sleeve.

“Come on, let’s go to the table. We’ve gotta count that money.”

It’s dark at the table. There are no overhead light fixtures anywhere in the room. From somewhere Claudia conjures up a stubby little candle on a wooden candleholder. She lights it, places it on the table. She goes over to the stereo and pushes a button. A record drops. Claudia lifts the arm of the stylus and sets it down precisely in a groove. Music starts. Jimi Hendrix. Voodoo Chile. The long, slow version. They sit down to count.

They count silently, Claudia handling the bills, Wilbo doing the coins. He loses his place repeatedly. Her body seems to pulsate in the candle glow. He feels something like heat, but not heat, radiating from her, bathing his fingers, his arms, his face, his mind.

“I got a hundred and eighty three dollars here,” she announces, “What’d you get?”

“Uh, well, I think it’s uhh… maybe we should start again.”

“Oh, you silly man!” She reaches out and covers his hand with her hand. Wilbo lets his arm go limp and she guides his hand over to the money. She grasps his fingers in her fingers and squeezes them over each stack of quarters, nickels and dimes. Then when they’re stacked, she takes his forefinger and touches it to each pile, counting out loud as she does.

“Eighteen dollars and thirty five cents in change.’ she says when they’re done. “You do the math, Wilbo. Do the math! Don’t worry about the pennies.”

But Wilbo can’t do the math in his head. His thoughts are flying every which way. He looks around for a paper and pencil. That’s right- his drawing pad. It’s sitting at his feet. He picks it up and scribbles out the figures.

“Two hundred and one dollars and thirty five cents.” he says at last. He tries to think, Is that good? That’s good, isn’t it? But a value judgment expressed in monetary units is far from his mind.

“Whoa!” Claudia jumps from the table. “Two hundred one and thirty five!” She spins around.

“That’s very good, Wilbo. Isn’t it?”

“Yeah, sure, that’s good, that’s…very good.”

“Draw me, Wilbo!” she cries suddenly. “Draw me while I dance!” And she’s off again, leaping across the floor into a whole new set of movements, always fresh, always spontaneous, always unrehearsed.

Wilbo picks up his pad but at first he can’t draw anything. He can only watch. His arms feel like stone. He searches his mind for some perspective that will free them. His thoughts go back to yesterday in the street, not so many hours ago, when they merged in an oneness of movement, and then he took the lead.

“Kinko Syncho Quinto.” he says out loud, and touches his pencil to his tongue. He clutches the pad and begins to draw.

She’s doing a cat dance, pouncing and leaping. In his first drawing she’s a cat, tossing a mouse into the air. He even draws a little mouse airborne in the top left hand corner of the page.
Then she goes into a spin, the force of the spin propelling her arms out like streamers. He draws her with candy stripes, and many arms.

The spin slows, then tilts, then wobbles into something else, a series of awkward, whirling leaps that threaten to fly out of balance at any moment. She throws her arms open wide and clamps them together as if she is trying to attract the forces of equilibrium. He captures her in a freeze frame, her arms together, her fingers grasping the toe of an outstretched foot. Her arms fly up and overhead, up and overhead, up and overhead; each arc is smaller than the one before. She’s lowering the roof, she’s bringing down the sky, she’s narrowing the possibilities. He draws her trajectory in a series of overlapping images, each one inside the other.

Like the nude descending the staircase, he thinks to himself.

It’s as if she reads his thoughts. Her descending arcs bring her to the floor where she remains for just a moment, her bare knees on the hardwood, her body prostrated forward, her fingers brushing the toe of his shoe. Then she rises as if rising from a lake. He can almost see the drops of water falling from her rising fingers. He grasps the pencil and tries to draw this image. But what she does next stops him completely.

Her arms descend from above her head, and with her lake-drenched fingers she undoes the top button of her dress, then the next, then the next. The buttons go all the way down. When all the buttons are open she lets the dress slip off her shoulders. It tumbles to the floor and she stands there, completely naked.

Wilbo knows he must not betray his pounding heart, not to mention his suddenly awakened and throbbing sex. He still has the pencil in his hand. Frantically he scratches out an image of her naked form. Perhaps it’s not the best nude he’s ever done.

She looks at his hands. At first he thinks she’s going to try to snatch the picture from him. But then she’s off again, whirling into a whole new dance, her naked dance. She does it with her eyes closed, her feet planted mostly in one place on the floor. She sways, side to side and front to back. She looks like she’s perched on the rim of a great precipice, courting its perilous expanse, daring it to catch her fall. She pulls back eventually, and begins a slow dervish twirl, away from Wilbo, toward the dark, hidden corners of the room. Her languid spin propels her arms up only part way, like petticoats below her waist. She keeps her eyes closed as if she’s still a little shy of her nakedness. Even so, she begins to approach him cautiously, flinging her arms in his direction while her body follows. She must be drawn by his heat, or by the candleglow on the inside of her eyelids. From the stereo in the corner, Jimi croons:

Well, my arrows are made of desire
From far away as Jupiter’s sulfur mines…

Wilbo draws in a frenzy. He’s thinking maybe the mental activity and the glancing away will keep him from exploding, but the pictures themselves excite him. His pencil becomes his fingers and the paper is her skin. He tries to draw her as something else, an object with less sensual power, a tree, a lamp, a vase. He draws her as a column of smoke rising from a stack. He draws her as a Chinese pagoda. But the woman keeps breaking out of the object and the sensuality keeps pouring out of the woman.

He has ripped out a dozen or more drawings by the time she makes her direct approach; gliding her bare feet across the polished wood floor, she must open her eyes now to keep from slipping on the scattered paper. The closer she gets the more clumsy her movements become, a great self-consciousness permeates them. Standing directly in front of him, within arms reach, she cannot maintain eye contact. First she casts her gaze down, then she closes her eyes completely and continues to sway, timidly in his presence. This genuine bashfulness only excites him all the more. The pad and the pencil fall helplessly into his lap.

Then he sees something he hadn’t noticed before. How could he have missed it? In all his mad scratching and scribbling, how could he not have seen? She’s wearing something around her neck. No, it’s not the key on the chain. She threw that on the floor when she first came in. It’s a thin black cord- a shoelace! and there, hanging between her breasts, a stone amulet, a carving of a harlequin-face, laughing or crying…

Instinctively he reaches out and grabs the talisman. “How did you get that?” he cries.

She pulls away. The stone slips through his fingers. Claudia suddenly regains her composure. She bursts into laughter.

“Well, I got it from you, silly. I got it from around your neck.”

“But…when?”

Now she can hardly contain herself. “You don’t remember, do you?” she says. “Ha! I got away with it! I did it! Now it’s going to haunt you. I’m going to haunt you, Wilbo. I’m going to haunt your dreams!”

Surely this is not her intention, but these words completely break the spell. It breaks with an audible snap. He thinks, what a child she is! A foolish child! The whole thing… so absurd! The absurdity crashes like a wave and he feels the power of his will returning, all the crazy impulses of his body draining away into stillness. At the same time the music ends, Jimi’s catharsis shrieking and wailing to a climax and breaking into chaos with the final ricocheting bang of the snare. Wilbo shakes back his head and straightens his posture.

“Put your dress back on, Claudia,” he says. “I think I’ve drawn enough.”

Claudia is strangely acquiescent. She stops laughing at once. “Yes sir!” she says. Perhaps there is a tone of mockery in her voice but there is also an ample share of respect. She scampers over to the dress, lying crumpled on the throw rug. She pours it back over her body like a marinade.
But once dressed, she becomes playful again. She waltzes over to the drawings on the floor and gathers them up in her arms as if they were wildflowers.

“Let’s see what you did,” she says. “Let’s see what you thought of my dance.”

Wilbo isn’t thinking of the pictures. “Am I going to get it back?” he asks her. Even though it’s a question, there’s the power of authority in his voice.

She halts with her arm full of drawings. “Get what back?”

“The amulet you took from me. From around my neck.”

She drops the papers and fishes for the cord from inside her dress, knocking open the top button as she does.

“Amulet? Why do you call it an amulet?”

“Do you know what it is?”

“No, it’s a silly necklace. What is it?”

He takes the stone from her hands and she makes her body go limp and somehow weightless, like a piece of cotton, so that he draws her toward him with a tug on the shoestring.

“It’s Arlequino. He’s the Italian trickster, like coyote is for the Indians, or like the Fool on the Hill is for the Beatles. His smile plays tricks. You can’t tell if he’s laughing or crying.”

She reaches up suddenly and grabs his wrist. Her touch is gentle but firm. She coos, demurely,

“Wilbo. Do you have a girlfriend?”

He sighs. This question does not make him happy. He releases the stone but she does not let go of his wrist. He pauses, he sighs again. He doesn’t know what to say. What a silly game! He must not give in to this silly game.

“Claudia, do you know how old I am? Do you know how old you are? I’m nearly old enough to be your father.”

She drops his wrist. She pulls back. She looks hurt. It’s only an act, he tells himself.

“What does that have to do with anything?” Her voice has a whining edge. “If you were twenty-one you’d be old enough to be my brother, but you wouldn’t be my brother. The point is, you’re not my father, Wilbo. What difference does it make how old you are?”

He doesn’t say anything. He knows the answer but he has no idea how to articulate it. Mostly he wishes they weren’t talking about this. He wishes they were still back where they were before, and he was telling her about Arlequino.

She flops down into the other chair, crosses her legs and arms. “Well, I was just asking a question, anyhow. I wasn’t asking for a lecture. Just answer my question. Do you have a girlfriend, Wilbo?”

“No, I don’t.”

“A wife then?”

“No. No wife.”

“Well, you had a wife then. Or a girlfriend. You’ve got kids. You’re a homosexual. I’m just looking for information here, ok? Cough up some information. That’s not so hard to do.”

Wilbo relaxes. Offer up some information. That’s not so hard to do.

“Well, I’ve had lots of girlfriends. I came into puberty in nineteen fifty-five. There were girls back then. And then there were the sixties. Lots of girls in the sixties…eager, willing girls. But something happened to me. It wasn’t like something that happened all of a sudden, like a bolt of lightning. It was more like the fruit of many long ponderings…”

Wilbo stops himself and thinks, why am I telling her this? She doesn’t care! But when he glances up at her, it’s evident she’s listening, at least. She’s leaning forward on the chair, forearms resting on her spread knees, staring at him with her jaw slack. What she’s hearing, he’s not sure. But she’s listening.

“I have this brother,” he continues. “His name is Arno. He’s younger. He got married in nineteen sixty-two. He got married to this girl I used to go out with, but that doesn’t have anything to do with it. He talked me into going to college with him. San Francisco State. I wasn’t going to go to college when I got out of high school. I thought the world was about to end. Why go to college? The world is about to end! But then when Arno graduated he talked me into enrolling in college. We would room together, we would get high and have fun. Let the world end! Who cares? But then that summer he married Eleanor, out of the blue, he married Eleanor. That one year I lived with them, it was a nightmare. His life was already falling apart. He wasn’t looking at the big question. Marriage, family, career- they’re all related. They all have to do with that one big question. You know the one…”

You don’t know the question, he tells her in his head.. At your age…But he continues.

“You know the question- the big question. Why did we come here in the first place? Why didn’t we just remain scattered particles of energy, diffused throughout the universe? Why did we have to get organized into bodies and brains and appetites? And only for a short time. Then we just fall apart again, like we started out…”

“Like flowers that bloom and fade!” Claudia interjects, suddenly. The words come spilling out of her, like she’s finishing his train of thought, because he’s not doing it quickly enough. She’s leaning so far forward she’s barely connecting with the chair. Wilbo is taken aback by her enthusiasm, and by the simple, charming appropriateness of her response. Unsure where to go next, he tries a variation on the theme.

“Like uh... like the cacophony of the universe…uh… like a piece of music, folding out of silence, then falling back into silence again.” This is good. Let’s stop this psychotherapy bullshit. Let’s play word games.

Claudia smiles and arches her back. “Like a dance,” she says, “Because of the music. And it ends because the music ends.”

“Like a wave.” Wilbo responds. “On a flat, glassy sea. It rises and it breaks, and then the sea is flat again.”

“Like a thought!” she cries. “It comes into your head, you think it, and then you forget it!”

Like an erection, he thinks to himself. It comes from nowhere. It goes away. Eventually. But he doesn’t say this.

“Like a dream,” he says instead, “It’s in Technicolor, on a big screen. It scares you; it excites you. But when you wake up, it’s gone.”

Claudia stands up abruptly, effectively halting the flow of ideas. She walks to the sink. She turns on the water and rearranges the dishes with no obvious intent. She turns off the water and faces him.

“But that still doesn’t tell me why you haven’t got a girlfriend.”

Wilbo was enjoying the abstractions. He really doesn’t want to have to go back to the story. It’s just too much work, trying to tell it. He attempts another approach.

“Well, what about you?” he says. “I could ask you the same question. Why haven’t you got a boyfriend?”

“Oh, you know about me, already, silly,” she replies. “You met the guy. I’m in between. I’m on the rebound. I’m young. Young people, we’re always on the rebound. But you, you’re… you’re not so young. There’s more to it with someone who’s… not young.”

“Ah! So it does matter, then. The difference in our ages.”

She makes an exasperated expression. “I’m not talking about us anymore, Wilbo. Let’s just drop that one. Look, I put my dress back on, Ok? I just mean… when you got some years behind you, you’ve got some stories. There’s reasons for the things you do. Us young people, we just do things. We’re impetuous. We do things… just to see what would happen.”

He has to laugh. “It doesn’t really change that much.” he says. “When you get older. Except that you get into ruts, and your energy starts to run out.”

As soon as he says this, he can feel it happening- his energy running out. It’s not that he’s tired, not physically, at least. He could go down to the boardwalk right now, throw out his hat and pull out his concertina, set to work, if it wasn’t midnight. If the place wasn’t deserted. He’s got plenty of energy for the work. It’s just this talking, this intellectual sparring, this guessing and counter-guessing, this dredging up of explanations and excuses. Oh, he could introspect right now. That’s different. He’s got plenty of energy for that. He could sit at his bench and ponder all night long, until it was time to offer up the fruit of his ponderings to old John of Dreams. That sounds pretty good right now. That’s what he’d like to be doing.

She breaks his reverie with a hand on his knee.

“I can read your thoughts,” she says, “You’ve had enough of me. You want to go home now.”

He looks at her and sighs. There’s a sweetness in her voice that disarms him, not to mention the irresistible loveliness of her face as she looks into his eyes.

“Well, maybe for now,” he says, “But we’re not done. We’ll get together again. We’ll do some more of this.”

Her smile is full mischief. “Yeah, ok. And maybe we’ll do some more of that, too.”

This makes him blush, visibly- he can feel it, and it ignites a little tiny spark- a pilot light- that he knows is going to be burning there for a long time. He picks up his pad and his pencils. He picks up all the drawings from off the table and off the floor and files them neatly between the pages of the pad. She does not protest. He finds his concertina in the case, checks to make sure the snaps are secure, then starts for the door.

“Hey, wait a minute! Don’t forget the money!”

He turns back. There’s the money, still neatly stacked in coins and bills on the table.
“Oh, yeah, the money.”

He walks to the table, fishes out the sack from his pocket, and sweeps the neatly stacked piles back into the disorder of the bag. He leaves one pile of tens uncounted on the table. He nods to it.

“That’s your take,” he says. “For all your help. Thank you, really. Thank you.”

She beams a big, smile, childlike and guileless.

“Wow! That’s cool! Thanks, Wilbo!” She snatches up the pile of bills and begins to count them. He’s just about to leave when he remembers something else.

“Oh yeah,” he says, “This might interest you.” He pulls one of the cards from the Lighthouse out of his pocket and drops it on the table.

She glances at it perfunctorily, then continues counting. Before she completes the sum, he is out the door.