In the Shape of a Man

by Paul Clayton

They reached Hillside Boulevard and stood waiting for the bus. Rad wished Tawny hadn’t accepted the dinner invitation to his parents’, but he’d long since forgiven her. She knew he hardly ever went over there these days. In fact, he only went when his dad’s truck wasn’t in the driveway. And then only to stay for ten, maybe fifteen minutes. His mom would always insist he have a glass of ice tea or something. Then he’d go. Rad thought that probably since Tawny’s own dad had died and her mom lived so far away, she had transferred her affections for her own family to his. The thought that she had such respect and warmth for his own family moved him, despite his own troubles with his dad.

  Rad stared across Hillside Boulevard at the little stand of ten or twelve eucalyptus trees and the tan velvety, gentle flanks of San Bruno mountain rising up behind them. The eucalyptus trees rose straight and tall, their mottled brown and tan trunks powerful and column-like. He thought the grove was like some kind of temple to nature, something like what you would see in Africa. He watched the long limbs of the trees bend slightly in the wind, shaking their leaves rhythmically like tribal dancers against the tan backdrop of the mountain. Nothing in the view had been changed by the hand of man as far as he knew. How many people had a view like that? Only a few. The rich. And him, when he stood up here waiting for the bus. And they wanted to tear it out and plant condominiums on it?

  Rad looked left and right for signs of the coming development. There were no construction sheds yet, no little wooden engineer stakes driven into the earth, no fluorescent pink paint markings on the sidewalk. Nothing. Not yet. And Rad hoped it would stay that way for a long, long time. He had written letters to the editors of the two San Francisco newspapers, and so far neither had printed them. That had surprised him. The people in San Francisco were very progressive, and strong opponents of the deforestation in Indo-China and the rain forests of Brazil, and yet, here in their own backyard, the virgin slopes of San Bruno Mountain were about to be ravaged by developers and they didn’t seem to be interested. He couldn’t believe it. He decided to write another letter when he got back to the house later.

  Rad watched two red-tailed hawks glide over the peak and follow the ridge down to his right. They hovered almost motionlessly over the plateau in the powerful current of air that passed overhead. Below them, some mouse or ground squirrel had no doubt frozen into motionlessness, calculating the distance to its hole. A couple hundred feet further up the hill, a shelf-like strata of black granite slabs jutted out from the tan, fur-like, grassy slope of the mountain. In winter, when the rains were particularly heavy, the tall grasses would turn emerald green and the run off from the canyon would spill out from over granite shelf, creating a micro version of the bridal veil falls at Yosemite Park for three or four days.

  Tawny squeezed Rad’s hand lovingly. “What’s the matter, Babe? Miss your board?”

  Rad looked at her and smiled sadly. “Nah. Not when I got my woman.”

  “Liar,” Tawny said teasingly. She leaned up and kissed him.

  The SamTrans bus appeared coming down the slope and they drew closer to the curb to board.

  To Rad’s surprise and relief, dinner was uneventful, almost pleasant, with only a slight edge to it due to his father’s presence. His sister Helen and her husband Roger and their six-year-old son Jay provided the necessary insulation between Rad and his dad. Rad and Helen had fought like cats and dogs when they were kids. How he had hated her! But now they got along great. Helen was happy and she looked better than Rad ever remembered. It struck him that happiness can change a person’s appearance. Although Rad admired Roger, he still felt a distance from him. Roger was about thirty-five, tall and slim. He’d had his thinning blond hair permed to make it look thicker in front. He was a nice guy, a successful accountant, and provided a nice life for Helen and little Jay, but he was a stranger to Rad. Helen had met and married Roger when she’d been going to school back East. Rad hadn’t gone to the wedding; it had been just before finals and his grades had not been good. Then Roger and Helen settled down back in New Jersey. Jay was born. Then, six years later they moved to San Francisco when Roger’s company transferred him. Rad knew his sister had made a good choice, or at the very least she had gotten lucky, and Rad loved his nephew Jay like the little brother he’d never had. But whenever Roger and Helen were over his mom and dad’s place, Rad was always on his guard in case his dad took a shot at him in front of Roger. Dad had complained to Rad on several occasions about how skating was ‘just for kids,’ when in reality, the really good skateboarders were mostly all adults, if you considered early twenties to late thirties, adults. Kids could boogey in the parking lot, grinding and making noise with lots of attitude, but it took real talent and years of practice to get to the point where you could launch yourself from a half pipe and do a 360 air walk and land it without breaking your neck, arm, leg, ankle, wrists, or all of them.

  Helen and Tawny got up from the table and started clearing the dishes. Rad was feeling good, like being in the home stretch of a PE run back in his high school days. His mom was a good cook with a repertoire greater than his and Tawny’s combined, and there hadn’t been much conversation around the table as everybody scarfed down her roast beef, twice-baked potatoes and gravy and asparagus spears topped with homemade Hollandaise sauce. He and his father had exchanged a few pleasantries and comments about the weather and the Forty-niners and that had been it.

  Rad watched his dad pour himself a beer and sit back down at the table. Except for his beer gut, his dad was still in pretty good shape for a man his age. Rad figured it probably came from his long hours working on his feet and using his hands in his home remodeling business. He still had a head full of brown hair, although he was developing a bald spot at the top.

  “Did you hear about all the houses they want to put up on the mountain?” Helen called out as she rinsed off the plates and cutlery.

  “They already have their financing,” said Roger. He took a sip of his cabernet. “They have some Asian outfit backing them.”

  Dad nodded sagely, seeming to wait for Rad to weigh in before he said anything. Little Jay came over to Rad and tugged on his hand. “Let’s play on the skateboard, okay?”

  “Did you bring your board?” Rad asked.

  “Uh huh,” said Jay.

  “Okay,” said Rad. “I’ll meet you out on the driveway in a minute.” Rad looked over at Helen as little Jay walked off. “It’s not a done deal,” he said. “There’s an outfit trying to stop it. They’ve got a protest march planned for later this month. I might join them.”

  His dad scoffed. “Hah! Protest march! That’s not gonna change anything.”

  “Oh, Dad,” said Helen. “You’re just saying that because you’re in the business yourself.”

  “No, no” said Dad slowly, taking no offense. “I only do remodeling, additions. Small potatoes stuff.”

  Roger sipped his wine, smiling at the exchange. “Is that right?” he asked. “You can’t get any of the action?”

  Dad shook his head. “Some big outfit like DeLoi or Rawlings will get most of it.” Dad looked Rad in the eye. “There’s too much money involved here, Rad. No bunch of flea-bitten wannabe hippies marching down Hillside Boulevard is going to stop it.”

  Roger laughed at the comment.

  Rad smiled and took a sip of his Coke. There it was. He knew he would not get through the evening without some kind of putdown from his dad. His dad could be outrageous at times, especially when he got excited. Still—flea-bitten hippies? Why did he always have to put things in such terms? Rad excused himself from the table and headed for the driveway to show little Jay some moves on the skateboard.

  Chapter 5

  1015 Skyview Drive. Allen left the house for his workout. As he fast walked up the street toward Hillside Boulevard, he looked nonchalantly at the other properties on the block. All were tidy and kept up, with, of course, the exception of the rental at 1030. Overhead, the boiling clouds of fog they got this time of year, rolled eastwa
rd, generating a steady wind and chilling everything beneath them. This was the first Saturday in a month Allen hadn’t had to work. They had planned a family outing, but Reynaldo had gotten into some kind of trouble. Allen had awoken late and heard Tina questioning Reynaldo in his room:

  “Why did you do it?”

  “I don’t know, Mommy.”

  “Yes you do know. Now why did you do it? Tell me!”

  “I don’t know, Mommy.”

  “Don’t lie to me! You do know. Now, why did you do it?”

  Allen had lain in bed for several minutes, listening. On and on it went, back and forth. Why the hell couldn’t she just let it go? Kids do things sometimes and they don’t know why. When he was a kid he had been throwing stones at cars driving by… until he hit one and the driver circled around, grabbed him, and took him to his parents. To this day he didn’t know why he had done it.

  Allen had been tempted to go out and ask Tina to lighten up. But that would have broken the so-called united front. He’d listened until he couldn’t stand it anymore and then had taken his shower. By the time he came out, Tina and the kids had already had their breakfast and a pall hung in the house. Reynaldo was grounded for the weekend, confined to his room. And so they would all stay home.

  Allen had his coffee alone in the kitchen as Tina went about her chores. She came through the kitchen carrying a hamper of clothes down to the garage to put in the washer. When she came back up he asked her if she needed any help. She ignored him. A moment later he heard her running the vacuum. After finishing his coffee he left the kitchen to use the bathroom before starting his walk. Christine was watching cartoons in the living room. Allen looked in Reynaldo’s room as he passed in the hallway. The little guy’s eyes were wet with tears as he sat at his desk working on his definitions. Tina had a regimen for Reynaldo that involved him writing down the dictionary definitions of about fifteen or twenty words in his best penmanship and memorizing their spelling and meaning. This sometimes went on for four or six hours. Then Tina would quiz him. If he could successfully spell the words and recite their meanings, he could go play or watch TV.

  Reynaldo turned his head in Allen’s direction, but Allen hurried past. He thought Tina’s assignments were excessive, so how the hell could he look into those sad brown eyes when he was supposed to maintain the parental united front?

  Allen decided to walk through the old downtown first before he power walked along Hillside. He turned onto Beech Street, then left onto Second Avenue, which ran through the oldest part of South San Francisco. The houses here were small and solid looking, like the houses in San Francisco, which were probably the same age. There were even several multi-story brick or stone apartment buildings of the type one might see in Philadelphia on the East Coast where he had grown up. But such solid edifices were rare in earthquake country.

  Just past the Olympic gas station, Allen came to his favorite building—a brick three-story apartment house. He felt almost as if he had gone through some kind of dimensional warp and wound up back in Philly. One of the apartments on the second floor always drew his eye. Its sitting room picture window was framed by white brocaded curtains held open by pink velvet ties. Within this frame, two plush red upholstered chairs were turned slightly toward a table between them upon which sat a porcelain vase-style lamp with a lush fabric cover. It was, Allen imagined, exactly the kind of place that an old retired couple would live in. In their late seventies, having long contributed their time and energy to the community in the form of taxes paid, time volunteered socially, children properly raised and sent off to other parts of the country to establish beachheads of civility and citizenship, this serene couple now rested, occasionally looking out this window to ensure that the newcomers were now doing their part to bear up and carry forth the burden of good citizenship. Allen thought he had seen them once when he was walking by, but most of the time the almost-regal chairs were empty. Allen wished he knew the old couple. And he wanted what they had for himself someday, a quiet, bright, peaceful perch to look out in clean, respectful comfort onto the dingy chaos of the city’s streets.

  Allen walked up Acacia Street to Hillside Boulevard. He started fast walking against the traffic. After about five minutes he got his wind and settled into a good aerobic pace. As the road climbed higher, hugging the mountain’s side, a BMW raced past—closer to the curb then necessary, Allen thought. He didn’t look up, his brows furrowing unconsciously as he leaned into the cool winds buffeting him. Other cars raced past. He refused to look at the faces of the drivers, not giving them the satisfaction of a look. He had been in a hurry to get out of the house and he was wearing his dress-down working-around-the-house clothes, instead of his workout sweats. He thought that perhaps the drivers racing past him now assumed that he was of a low economic class walking hurriedly, not to burn off calories and reduce his cholesterol, but rather to get from point A to point B because he didn’t own a car. Nothing could be further from the truth, he thought to himself. Another car raced by, the shock wave and the warm rotten-egg-smelling exhaust assaulting him. Fuck you, he thought.

  Allen looked down the slope to his left and spotted the high redwood fence of the first house he and Tina had owned. On the other side of the fence a dog barked at him. He had had that fence put up himself. He had used some Chinese contractor Tina’s friend had recommended. That was before the kids came along. Back then he and Tina had had their fights too. But usually they’d end up in the sack that night, making lustful kiss-and-make-up love to one another. Lately they’d slacked off a bit, he realized sadly.

  Allen reached the summit of Hillside Boulevard. The road ahead sloped downward at a slight angle for about a hundred yards, and then began climbing again. On his right was the Mancini plant nursery with dozens of redwood tubs of potted trees lined up in orderly rows. Above the nursery, San Bruno Mountain rose gradually, the angle growing steeper at about fifteen hundred feet. There, granite outcroppings pushed through the soil. A dozen or so derrick-like microwave re-transmission towers capped the mountain.

  Allen walked on for another quarter mile, coming to a small, round metal sign sprouting out of the ground next to the pavement—Colma City Limits. Bordering South San Francisco, the town of Colma had an interesting and unusual history. A tiny city, only eleven hundred people lived there, but over one and a half million reposed in its sixteen cemeteries. Known as the necropolis of San Francisco, Colma was home to the remains of Wyatt Earp, Governor Edmund Brown, A. P. Giannini, founder of the Bank of Italy, a Hells Angel buried astride his Harley Davidson motorcycle, Emperor Norton, Ishi, the last wild California Indian, and Tina Turner’s dog, buried in the singer’s mink coat, along with millions of lesser loved and/or forgotten souls.

  Allen leaned slightly into the wind, enjoying its buffeting and the fact that by having to overcome its force, he was probably doubling his workout, his calorie expenditure. He came to the ornately-carved stone gates of Holy Cross Cemetery and paused. He breathing was labored and he wondered if part of that was due to some deeply-hidden feelings which the morning’s disturbance back at the house had loosened in him. Or perhaps it was purely physical from the exertion, and his mind was mistakenly connecting it to the breathlessness of anxiety.

  Why the hell did Tina have to be so hard on Reynaldo? And why did she let her anger get the better of her every time? He wondered what a therapist would have to say about that. He glanced at his watch. He’d been walking thirty minutes. The return would give him an hour total, his normal routine.

  His eyes slowly panned the well maintained green expanse of Holy Cross Cemetery. If he cut through it, he could work his way back from there. It would be roughly the same distance, he calculated, and it would give him more to look at than just the road and the steady stream of Saturday people driving along Hillside Boulevard to their tennis lessons, or taking their kids to Great America, or Golden Gate Park or wherever. He started down the road into the cemetery.

  Allen enjoyed the peaceful feelin
g of the cemetery. There were no cars racing by, no dogs barking at him, only the occasional distant prolonged whoosh of a jet high overhead. The blacktop road wound back and forth down the gentle slope of the hill. On either side, orderly rows of memorial stones marked the graves. Here and there a granite or marble mausoleum rose high up out of the earth to proclaim the wealth and prestige of its occupant.

  Allen paused at a large, white marble vault topped with a statue of an angel. One of the wings had broken off long ago and the northernmost side of the sculpture was covered with a patina of green moss. An old, gnarled pine tree rose above it and the ground around the area was littered with a blanket of brown pine needles. It was an especially beautiful place and Allen was tempted to linger. But this was his workout and so he continued walking. Near where the road bottomed out, he saw a long, adobe-style cemetery maintenance building. On the other side of it, a red Honda drove down a road with a solid yellow line in the middle. Allen realized he was looking at Mission Road, which traversed most of the cemeteries. The car was headed in the direction of Daly City. On the other side of Mission Road, a high fence blocked off what Allen assumed to be train tracks. Back along Mission Road, in the direction of his own house, he spotted a ramshackle auto body shop with a corrugated tin roof and two dilapidated, rusting gas pumps out front. In the other direction he saw a large mustard-colored clapboard building with a sign out front that said McCoy’s. What appeared to be a red and blue neon Budweiser sign glowed in the window, and Allen assumed it was a bar. He wondered how in Hades they got any business out here.

  Allen looked at his watch. It was almost eleven. He could walk around the cemetery building and have a beer and sandwich at the bar. But he didn’t want to be away too long, just in case Tina relented and released Reynaldo early from his detention. Then they could all go someplace and enjoy what was left of their Saturday. He walked on.

  Allen came to a fork in the road and paused. The road was newly paved and the smell of asphalt filled his nostrils. The heat of the day was building and he turned in the direction of South San Francisco. At a point about a block away, the road appeared to angle up to join Hillside Boulevard.