In the Shape of a Man

by Paul Clayton

  The road climbed, then angled around, coming to an end after a quarter of a mile in a little cul de sac. It was evidently a new division of plots the cemetery had recently opened up.

  Allen grew a little annoyed with himself. He wiped the sweat from his brow. Now he would have to retrace his footsteps. He scanned the fields stretching up and away in the direction of Hillside Boulevard. They came to an end at some kind of community garden. He could see orderly rows of poles set in the earth and what looked like a stable. He had heard that there was a 4H club up there somewhere. Maybe that was it. Allen was about to turn around when some movement caught his eye. A slick, fat earthworm writhed in the bright sunlight, then tumbled down a mound of freshly dug earth that was heaped up on the lawn. For some reason he walked up the new marble steps and onto the lawn.

  Three graves had been dug in a row. Each of them was deep, Allen estimated, maybe six or seven feet. He thought of what his mother had told him when he was a kid about his Uncle John. As the story went, he had left the taproom in his cups, as they used to say, and taken a shortcut home through the cemetery. Falling into a deep grave, he had been unable to get out. After struggling for hours he had finally given up, laid down and fallen asleep. The sound of approaching footsteps woke him. Someone stood at the edge of the grave in the gray light of dawn. Their face was obscured, but Uncle John had sworn that they’d had a clubfoot—the mark of the devil. By the time the workers found Uncle John later that morning, his hair had turned snowy white.

  Allen stared at the graves. The one on the far right was smaller, child size, he realized with sadness. Some family must have recently suffered an awful tragedy. Three graves—a father, a mother, and a small child would lie here. He and Tina had two children and were a family of four. This numerical difference comforted him and gave him enough distance to imagine this unfortunate family’s end. He pictured them in a car on a highway at night. They were returning from a weekend trip. The father was at the wheel, his eyes almost closed from exhaustion, the bright pinpoints of headlights doubling, coming together, moving apart, fading. The mother and child slept in the back seat. The engine droned and the man’s eyelids drooped. He opened them suddenly as blinding light flooded in. Cursing explosively, he jerked the wheel hard. The car swerved, then spun, disorienting the occupants as it hurtled through space. The woman screamed in horror, then the car landed on its roof, snapping their necks in an instant. Then silence. Allen felt a chill and turned away. He went back to the road and started walking.

  Chapter 6

  1030 Skyview Drive. On Sunday, Rad awoke to the sound of Tawny showering as she got ready for work. He looked at the clock: 8:14. He swung his feet over the bed and went out to the kitchen, putting on a pot of coffee. It had been three months since he’d spoken to the guy at Pygmy’s. They should have called him back by now as to whether or not they were going to sponsor him. He went into the living room and took the man’s card from his wallet. He dialed the number. The phone rang once and a voice came on. “Raines here.”

  Rad stared at the card, momentarily tongue-tied.

  “Who is this?” said Raines impatiently.

  “Hello, Mr. Raines,” said Rad. “Rad Anderson. I’m the guy from South San Francisco that sent you the tape. I was wondering if you guys had made any decisions yet on who you’re going to sponsor.”

  “Huh? Those letters should have been mailed out three weeks ago.”

  “I never received anything,” said Rad.

  “Shit,” Raines muttered at his end. “What did you say your name was again?”

  “Rad Anderson.”

  “Hold on a minute.”

  Rad waited. He heard the squeak of the faucet as Tawny turned the water off.

  Raines came back on the line. “Sorry, Anderson. They didn’t pick you. You’re probably the best skater of the bunch, but I don’t think you have the image they’re looking for. Who shot the video?”

  Rad felt stunned. He had a lump in his throat the size of an egg. “Huh? Oh, my girl did.”

  “She’s good, man.”

  “Yeah,” said Rad.

  “Well,” said Raines. “Sorry.”

  “Yeah,” said Rad, “thanks.”

  In what had become his knee-jerk reaction to bad news, Rad grabbed his board and went outside to work it out. Motion did it for him. It was his drug. Motion or Tawny. But he couldn’t share this with Tawny yet. It hurt too much. He had to grind off some of the sharp edges. As soon as he got out the door the sun hit him full in the face and he sneezed. He sat down on the steps, his board on his lap, and stared up at San Bruno Mountain. ‘Move!’ his mind told him, ‘Just move,’ but he just sat there, staring at the soft tan velvety flanks of the mountain. Mr. Peepers drove by, glancing at him surreptitiously. Rad had a momentary out-of-body experience, seeing himself from Mr. Peeper’s perspective as he sat on the steps like some little kid waiting for his friend to come over to play with him. Rad tried to deny the truth of the image, but it was too strong. He got up, leaned the board against the door, and started walking up the street. He felt odd without his board clutched in his hand. As he walked his eyes were again drawn to the mountain.

  Reaching the top of Skyview, Rad stood on Hillside Boulevard, watching the high tan grass on the mountain move in waves, like some otherworldly sea. About two hundred feet up the slope, a grove of tall, dark green eucalyptus trees drew his eye. He stared at them and then looked beyond, following the hill up to its peak. A jet circled high overhead, its engines inaudible.

  No one climbed the sides of this beautiful mountain, Rad realized. He’d never seen anyone up there. Nobody cared about it. Not really, not enough to be on it. He had a sudden impulse to climb it. He frowned. Maybe he’d have a vision, like Moses or something.

  Rad waited for a break in the traffic and ran across the boulevard. He started up, following a rocky rubble-filled, dried-up streambed up the hill. The morning’s chill was almost gone and the sun was beginning to heat the air up.

  The streambed meandered off to the left and a faintly discernible trail continued straight up the slope. Rad walked slowly through the cool, dark aromatic shade of the eucalyptus grove. The path was littered with long strips of eucalyptus bark, crunchy brown leaves and acorn-like seedpods. The darkness was comforting and he was tempted to linger. But that was not what he needed now. On the boulevard below, the noise of the traffic had softened and was like the gentle sighing of a river or the surf. His anger and disappointment flared anew and he felt like hitting something. “Fuck it,” he said softly. “Just fuck it all!”

  He walked out of the grove into bright sunlight. The air was warm and dry. He had an easy go of it for the first third of the way up. The path was dry and rocky and he trod slightly hunched forward, short steady steps like a mule. The thick, still slightly-damp knee-high grass was sprinkled with golden California poppies and some purple wildflowers Rad didn’t know the name of. Below and behind him, South San Francisco was a flat gray grid of streets and buildings. Above, a jet plane banked in a tight turn after having taken off from SFO, the sound of its engines muffled by its altitude.

  He reached the first peak and paused to catch his breath. A broad grassy valley dotted with deep green chaparral stretched below about two thousand yards to the north. From it the fingers of the mountain rose up to the top. To his left, the tan squiggle of the trail ran out onto the nearest finger of the mountain, running level for about five hundred yards, then rising and disappearing behind a large rocky outcrop. Overhead, another jet, its twin engines mounted on its vertical stabilizer, banked into a tight turn, its long, skinny aluminum fuselage gleaming brightly in the sun.

  Rad resumed climbing. The wind came up and began whipping about his ears. To his left and right, deep valleys yawned full of grass, rocks and chaparral. Ahead, the mountain rose slowly, the trail etched into its center. Along the way, great shattered gray rocks rose here and there out of the tan hill like the battlements of a demolished castle. Anise and sage cr
owded the trail, giving off an aromatic air.

  It was very quiet. Rad realized that he had achieved an increasingly unique modern experience—that of being truly alone—unless, of course, there were people on the other side of the rocks ahead, which he doubted. He was like a solo sailor out of the shipping lanes; if something were to happen to him there was no one close enough to help him. His fists clenched reflexively, the idea thrilling him. He stared at the rocks, looking for any sign of movement.

  He began walking again. The trail ran parallel with another dried-up streambed and angled up. The footing was bad and Rad slipped several times. The grade was steep now and his breathing was coming hard, his heart pounding. He thought about turning around and going back. This was stupid. Did he expect to find a gray-headed old wise man sitting cross legged at the top of the mountain, waiting to ease his mind and help him unpuzzle his life? Of course not! So what the hell was he doing? It didn’t matter now. Only getting to the top did.

  He paused, breathing heavily. Two or three hundred feet below, a red Coast Guard helicopter was passing through the canyon. Rad thrilled at the sight. He saw the red choppers almost every day as they headed out toward the coast to patrol the beaches. Now he was higher than they were.

  He continued climbing. After another ten minutes he crested a steep rise in the trail and saw a pile of rocks crowning the peak. He pushed on toward it.

  Rad’s breath was wheezing out of him when he reached the peak and he was amazed at how difficult the climb had been. He sat on a flat rock in the sunlight, his chest rising and falling. He was thirsty, wanting only clear, cold water, and lots of it. To his left lay the gray concrete bowl of Candlestick Park and a marina with 40 or 50 sailboats, their masts like a forest of white trees and the deep blue of the bay beyond. On his right, the sun reflected blindingly off the Pacific Ocean. Almost directly below, the gray grid of South San Francisco came up against the soft green of the cemeteries of Colma—the orderly lines of polished tombstones glinting in the sun like parallel pools of water. He was reminded of the pictures he’d seen of rice paddies in Vietnam, his father’s pictures.

  Rad studied it all as the wind mussed his hair and the sun beat down on him. Slowly his breathing returned to normal and his strength returned. His head seemed to have emptied out. He had no profound answers, no insight. Nothing. But, strangely, he didn’t care. His disappointment had left him and been replaced by a kind of physical joy, a delight in his life and the young, strong body which had brought him up all the way up this high. He tried to pick out the house he and Tawny lived in, but couldn’t. When she left for work, she must have wondered where the hell he had gone, puzzling over the fact that he’d left his board behind. How many times had he done that? Never. He decided to call her at the shop when he got back to the place.

  He started down. Later, as he neared the roadway of Hillside Boulevard, he wondered where his answer was. He felt silly. There was no answer. Just like there was no sponsor. And he would not participate in the X Games and that was that.

  He ran across the boulevard and walked down the street to the house. On an impulse, he stopped and turned around to look back at the mountain. It was beautiful and voluptuous; but it was also helpless. Suddenly he knew what he would do.

  The article on the housing development was in Sunday’s paper. The paper was still in the garage somewhere. He would find it and get the number for that outfit, Mountain Saviors, or whatever they called themselves. He would help them oppose the goddamn greedy developers and save the mountain.

  Chapter 7

  1015 Skyview Drive. Allen sat on one of the two tiny yellow plastic chairs, his knees almost as high as his shoulders; Christine sat in the other. On the floor around them were the Barbie and Ken dolls, assorted doll clothes, a Ken and Barbie toy convertible car and, of course, Barbie’s house. Allen couldn’t recall which one of them had come up with the idea, but their play always consisted of him and Christine, each holding a doll up like a marionette and having a dialogue—simple things like:

  Christine as Barbie, “How was your day, Daddy?”

  Allen as Ken, “Fine, Honey. How were things at the house?”

  Allen was always charmed by these play sessions. Christine liked them and wanted the interaction and he always consented, although he had fallen asleep during them once or twice, only to be brought back by a petulant, ‘Daddy!’

  This time Allen fell silent for longer periods as he wondered and worried about the fate of his family. On a few rare occasions Tina had yelled at Christine and she had cried fearfully. But there had been nothing like the anger and seemingly-hateful behaviors that Tina exhibited toward Reynaldo. And this fact nailed down one truth for him—if he did break the family apart and file for divorce he would never get custody of his daughter. He knew it deep in his bones, because the bulk of Tina’s abuse had not been directed at her. But—there existed the very real possibility that he could lose Reynaldo as well. After all, if he divorced Tina he would be a single man, and he couldn’t imagine a judge giving custody of a child that had been treated as badly as Reynaldo had by Tina, to a single man. Allen had tried to temper Tina’s behavior, of course, but would that be enough to dissuade some judge from taking Reynaldo away from them both and giving him to an intact, loving couple, or putting him back into the system? Allen didn’t think so.

  “Tell me a story, Daddy,” Christine said, breaking into his thoughts.

  She had gotten out of her chair and pushed close to him. “Pick me up.”

  He picked her up and hugged her and his eyes teared up. He loved her deeply, but he didn’t know how much longer he would have her.

  Allen took the little note book and pen he always carried in his shirt pocket. He wasn’t much of an artist, but he illustrated the stories he told to Christine with crudely drawn stick figures and she liked it.

  “There was a little pig named Petey,” he began, wondering where he could take it.

  “Draw him,” she said, snuggling close into him.

  He sketched Petey on the lined paper, walking past some trees. “And when Petey was out walking, Sammy the snake saw him.

  “Draw it,” she said.

  He sketched a long Adam and Eve in the Garden-type serpent hanging down from a tree, tongue flicking out. “And then Sammy captured him.” Allen hurriedly scribbled ropes being wound around Petey the pig.

  “And then what happened, Daddy?”

  “Well, Sammy decided to cook him for dinner.”

  “Draw it.”

  Allen was sketching Petey the pig bound and sitting in a cauldron of boiling water when Tina entered the room.

  “Time for bed,” Tina announced.

  Christine fairly leaped out of his arms.

  In the dark of early evening, the police cruiser slowly drove down Grand Avenue as Allen sat in the parked van. The patrolman either didn’t see him or didn’t see him as any potential threat to the law-abiding citizenry, but Allen felt odd sitting in the dark and so he started the van up. He and Tina had had another fight and he had decided it was better to get out of the house and let things cool off. But where the hell could he go and who the hell could he talk to? He remembered the bar he’d seen from his walks in the cemetery—McCoy’s, or whatever it was called. It was on Mission Street in an old, mustard-colored wooden Victorian building.

  Allen put the van in drive and turned onto Mission. He drove past some long low buildings and realized they were part of El Camino High School. He drove further, figuring that the bar had to be just up ahead. He saw a driveway on his right with a sign—All Saints Mausoleum. As Allen continued to drive slowly, he looked at the sharply defined squares and rectangles of the granite mausoleums off in the dark on both sides of the road. Joe DiMaggio and William Randolph Hearst were buried out there somewhere. He had always meant to go see their graves. Ahead on his right, he saw what he assumed to be Holy Cross Cemetery. A dim light appeared just past that on the left, below it a sign—McCoy’s. He pulled into the park
ing lot.

  The building was as wide as two houses, two stories with a peaked roof. As Allen walked up to the door he thought wryly that only the Irish would put a bar and social club smack dab in the middle of over twenty cemeteries. He went inside.

  There were no customers at the bar. On the other side, an ancient-looking bartender sat on a stool before the tall pull handles of the beer taps. He nodded noncommittally at Allen. Gruff male voices came from the back room, then the crack of a pool break and the dull thud of a ball falling into a pocket. Allen slid onto a stool near the bartender and ordered a pint of lager. The bartender wordlessly leaned in to a shelf below the bar and took out a pint glass. He slowly filled it. Something about the man’s face intrigued Allen and he looked away, not wanting to stare. The man appeared to be about seventy, but he looked strong for his age. Allen recalled his mother’s term, an ‘old bird,’ then decided that that other term, ‘old goat,’ would better describe this man.

  The bartender put the foam-dripping glass before Allen and he put a five-dollar bill down. The bartender’s full head of gray hair was as curly and thick as a Brillo Pad. Deep crags had etched into his face, reminding Allen of those Hummel figurines carved from pieces of driftwood in Cape Cod. The man’s wide nose appeared to have been broken once. High cheekbones, a jutting jaw, and innumerable wrinkles all testified to a hard life, perhaps as a stevedore or some kind of construction worker, or a sailor, some endeavor that had put him out to weather in the elements for long hours. Allen thought it was the kind of face a painter would like. Drama and struggle disfigured it, unlike Allen’s own smooth, slightly baby-faced face. Allen remembered an illustrator friend who used to work at Lockheed who used to carve busts of famous people out of apples. He would then leave them sitting on his desk where they’d dry up, taking on a grisly look, like shrunken heads. The bartender’s face had a similar look.