by Lorraine Ray
Someone was coming into camp. Half in, half out of a moving veil of white, the figure of a man advanced toward them.
Jack Tatum's dogs, which had spent the windy night under the truck, came to life in a mad scramble. The two dogs growled, shot sand every which way, and strained to pull themselves forward, their claws tearing deep grooves in the beach until they could duck under the rear axle of the '42 Ford. For a moment after they emerged, they retreated in confusion to the yard in front of the bungalow. There the youngest dog milled about stupidly, unable to reestablish the scent. Eventually, the venerable black Labrador lifted its muzzle in several directions and tested the air with trembling nostrils to find the scent again. Then, in stiff formality, partly arthritic, partly from an old dog's sense of dignity, its head held high to sniff the wind as though it weren't certain of its verdict, it led the younger dog in a trot up the path that was lined with volcanic rocks. Finally, the old dog lost command of its companion, and the younger dog charged past with its pink yapping mouth warning insistently of a visitor. It darted away toward the dunes.
"Back!" Frank shouted. "Call in the dogs," he yelled to Harry, his father, who had taken those dogs to Mexico before and who had more control over them.
"Barney! Mammoth! Both of you, come in! Come! Come in now!" Harry shouted. And then, when the very obedient dogs returned, rather sheepishly sniffing and throwing glances over their shoulder at the something they didn't like, Harry chastised them: "Hah! Hah! Get in there and stay! Get in there with you! What are you barking at so early in the morning?"
The beach became silent, except for that scouring wind.
Frank crouched barefoot in the sand near the truck bed, his fingers rooting around in a tackle box. "I have a survival gear lure in here somewhere. I wanted to try it out in the surf. I painted a number on it. I'm sure I dropped it in here. Now the goddamned thing is lost. Shit, I'm disorganized."
"Ay, and I've lost the ham," said Harry from the bed of the truck. Somewhere in the jumble of boxes, Jack Tatum claimed to have packed a canned hickory-smoked Virginia ham. Harry slid several of the boxes that they'd left out overnight toward the tailgate. He opened the cardboard flaps and took out bread, and then eggs, and then a paper sack full of green chilies. "Oh," he said, "was the ham in the box with the shrimp dressed up as dancers?"
"Yeah, maybe," said Frank absentmindedly.
Harry straightened up and clambered over a net and a bucket, walking toward the cab of the truck where the pile of boxed supplies sprawled. Had the canned ham been packed in the red box with shrimps dancing on the outside (and Harry bent over to find it) or the small chiller parts box nearly hidden in a corner against the cab? The answer was impossible to determine without clearing half a dozen other boxes. The thought of shifting all that weight caused Harry to reconsider. Perhaps breakfast would suit him perfectly without slices of fried ham beside his scrambled eggs? Yes, it ought to, Harry decided, and he'd leave the ham for another breakfast, or a dinner, if the fishing were bad, though everything about the sea that morning pleased Harry.
He straightened up again and leveled his brown eyes on the horizon to enjoy again the sparkling profile of the Sea of Cortez. A ribbon of lavender and pink draped the wet sand and a matching, paler ribbon, worn low on the sky, stretched below thin gray clouds. And inland, inland was beautiful too, where the white tops of the sand dunes splayed in a stiff morning breeze.
His eyes drifted further up the estuary to the glittering Rio Mayo, but there he was surprised.
"Saaannn--ta Monica, Redondo Beach," said Harry in a drawl that stretched out the 'Santa' to a tremendous length and ran the rest of the words together. He said this, almost whispered it to himself, and then stood transfixed, studying the dunes where the sand blew thickly over the Rio Mayo. "Someone's coming into camp. He's running in the dunes."
Harry kept watching the shifting veil of blowing sand.
"He's still running," Harry said.
"I don't see anything. What is it?" asked Frank eventually in a disinterested, distracted voice. He sat in the sand now, one bent knee up and the other lying flat. He continued digging through a tangle of lures in the bottom of a large rusty tackle box. Frank's brown hair had been shaved into a crew cut and he wore a paint-splattered pair of jeans, a khaki shirt buttoned haphazardly, and a dark blue watch cap, the only item from what had been, until a few days before, his Navy uniform. He'd come home to Arizona, a year after Japan's surrender, having spent the war working in a hospital in Chicago. His father had promised a fishing trip to the Sea of Cortez when he returned.
"It's a guy running," explained Harry again, "I can't be sure though. The sand is blowing thicker than Aunt Gertrudis' caldo de queso."
Frank grunted. He didn't know any Aunt Gertrudis, or her cheese soup, either.
Harry looked and, sure enough, through the blowing sand, the man appeared again. Trotting on the dunes, springing from the smearing purple dawn beginning upstream on the Rio Mayo, the tiny figure of a man materialized. And yet not just an ordinary man, there was something odd about his shoulders and his neck.
"This man that's running -- he's got something over his shoulders. It's hard to tell what," Harry said.
Harry watched as the figure disappeared. "Well, maybe he's not coming our way after all," he said, and he remembered he'd decided to give up on the ham, but a last glance back at the dunes showed the same thing again. "Oh yes. There he is again. I think he'll be coming to see us."
Running in to see them it seemed.
"He's carrying something," said Harry. Realizing he had been talking to himself, he tried again, but louder. "It's a man with something strange over his shoulder."
Harry looked again and could now clearly see the man was barefoot and dressed only in torn pants. On his bare shoulders he bore a massive deer. A gaunt dog followed closely at his heels.
"Frank, please, are you seeing this?" said Harry to his son.
Frank ignored his father. He was throwing lures around, digging in the bottom of the tackle box and cursing as barbs snagged the tips of his fingers.
"Frank, you won't believe this."
"Pop, I'm too damn busy," said Frank, thrusting a pair of horn-rimmed glasses higher on his nose, bending forward as if something fascinating lay in the box in front of him. "I like some of these others better. These other spoon lures."
"Let's take them then!" shouted Harry back jovially. "But please look at this."
Harry shifted his weight. He was a short man, already in his mid-fifties, graying around the temples, though most of his brown hair was hidden under a pith helmet that morning. He had a benevolent squint in his kind brown eyes from the years he'd spent working outdoors on roofs in Arizona. His tan shirt and pants, the uniform he wore to repair air conditioners and evaporative coolers, were rumpled after a night spent sleeping in them and the prior day's drive from Arizona to this fishing spot, a bungalow owned by the family of another repair shop (for Harry was friends with all his competitors). Their camp lay where the mouth of the Rio Mayo emptied into the Sea of Cortez. "Come on, won't you please look up for me, my son. Come around the back of the truck. You've got to see this for yourself. It's really quite an incredible sight."
"I want to find that goddamn lure," said Frank, "I had it. Hell, I know it's in here. Somewhere. I threw it in last night."
Harry felt again the nagging concern he'd sensed, pushed aside, and reexamined again and again over the last few days and especially the last hours on this fishing trip, about his son, about the illogical anger he sometimes displayed, about his constant cursing, the way he conveyed his words in such a clipped, succinct and angry fashion. Maybe it was only language, thought Harry. Harry had spoken Spanish as a child, and he felt it was a much more fluid language. Frank had been brought up with his mother, and spoke only English. "He's carrying a marvelous buck," called Harry, "almost fabulous."
Frank quit rummaging in the tackle box and tipped his body over so that his shoulder and head cleared the side of the tr
uck. This enabled him to see over the dark blustery dunes.
The man zigzagged around the scrubby bushes that dotted the sand. With each bounding movement sideways the dangling head of the buck swung and its tongue lolled out of its mouth. Frank dove back into the tackle box. "He's a Mayo, isn't he? What the hell does he want with us?"
Harry took a minute to absorb the way his son had said 'he's a Mayo'; there was a dismissive tone in his voice which Harry hated. "Coffee's probably what he's after," Harry said, swinging around and watching their smoke as it left the wide chimney of the bungalow. "He wants a cup. Our smoke's blowing inland."
Their visitor took the path marked with large volcanic stones straight toward the bungalow. His plans were unmistakable now; he headed straight for them, for the three trucks parked just outside the front yard and Harry's figure standing in the truck bed. At his approach, Harry lumbered awkwardly down off the tailgate, and walking up the path part way, called out an eloquent and munificent Spanish greeting, one that Frank didn't understand and never could repeat, though he knew the sound and could almost sing it. It was a pat phrase of Harry's, a courtly welcome that sounded ridiculous and splendid and inimitable with its sonorous se?ors and numerous por favors. His words were accompanied by a bow and a circular sweep down to his feet and back to his heart of that pith helmet he wore, like a turtle under its shell, whenever they were fishing in Mexico.
The man stopped where the rock-lined path began, outside the actual yard and beyond the trucks. He stopped as though he were too shy to approach any closer. He held the deer's limbs in his fists: four cloven hoofs together. His long smooth face, which appeared to sprout from the very belly of the dead deer, scooped inward like a strange shovel, and showed the barest suggestion of features, a slit of brown for a mouth, narrow nostril lines above, a pair of eyes and eyebrows being the darkest. He had a thatch of thick black hair and his lips were dried and cracked. He stood a long time before them without speaking, catching his breath, his nostrils fighting the fierce wind, or perhaps overcoming his shyness. Harry smiled at him with his head tilted, waiting, expecting. As Harry had predicted, the man, when he was finally able to talk, asked, in Spanish in a voice which barely broke above a whisper, for a cup of their coffee which he had scented in the wind. He asked if they would be so kind, if it wasn't too much trouble, if they could spare it for him, an unworthy stranger who had arrived without warning at their camp that morning.
Harry, agreeing immediately and effusively, walked the stranger closer to their door and went in to fetch the pot, passing Frank who had got up and was leaning sullenly against the tailgate. Harry sensed that Frank disagreed with his father's generosity.
When Harry left, the man bent forward and pitched the deer off his shoulders. The deer carcass plopped onto the sand, its eyes closed forever, a grim smile gracing its dark brown mouth. The man squatted and his dog stood behind, eyeing the deer, but not daring even to sniff it. In the early daylight, the hound's irises were glowing rings like those of a zombie-dog Frank remembered seeing in the Sunday comic pages. Its muzzle quivered and it whimpered from the scent of the deer or the fish bones and scraps buried in the sand around this fishing bungalow. The dogs under the truck whined back, but also didn't dare come out. Then, the visiting dog spiraled, nose-to-tail, down to its temporary bed in the sand.
Frank bent down and lifted the tackle case. He slid it into the truck bed. Grabbing the can of tackle and lures they had already chosen to use that morning from the truck bed, he tramped up the porch steps.
Frank began ripping a few strips of red and yellow flannel for a different kind of lure.
Harry reappeared struggling with three empty enamel cups, the coffeepot, a small bag of sugar and a spoon. He set everything in a row on the porch wall, poured a cup of coffee, scooped a generous spoonful of sugar into the black liquid and stirred. Steam trailed the brimming cup as he carried it down the front steps.
Their guest took the cup in both hands. "Gracias," he said after sipping.
Frank leaned on a porch pillar. He ripped the flannel for a while and then stopped to scratch his stomach. He studied the crumpled buck on the sand. Once death had been rare to him, the way it is to all children because they don't believe in it. But he'd seen a lot of it recently. He'd enlisted in the Navy at seventeen and left Arizona for training in San Diego. After that, because he was under eighteen and he'd expressed an interest in medicine, he'd been shipped to a North Chicago Naval hospital. At first they'd put him in the laundry, a warm place, something you needed in Chicago, despite the horror of working with blood-smeared sheets. But then, as the numbers of wounded increased, he'd become a night nurse in the wards, cleaning up after the parade of pieces called Marines when they were brought in from the islands of the Pacific. He'd seen every possible wound, everything a man could have torn off his body. The last year in the psychiatric ward hadn't been much nicer; the human brain could also be shredded by war and, as the era of psychiatric drugs had yet to arrive, it fell to Frank to wrestle those men into straightjackets.
"I'd like to know how he managed to fell the damn thing," said Frank finally.
Harry finished pouring himself a cup of coffee and held the pot over the third empty cup. Frank shook his head.
"Why don't you ask him?" Harry suggested. Harry took up his cup and drank.
"Oh, Pop, I forgot my damn Spanish." Frank patted his shirt pocket. "Dammit to hell," he muttered to himself, clumping down the steps to the truck. He yanked the truck door open and snatched a pack of cigarettes and a matchbook from the serape-covered seat. When he stepped out with the pack, he let the truck door fall shut behind him. "If I ever really knew any," he added, coming back up onto the porch. "Mom never spoke it. The counselor at school told me I ought to take Latin if I wanted to be a doctor. How was I going to learn Spanish?" He didn't add anything about his father not being around to teach him his native language. Sitting hunched on the porch wall against the side of a pillar that faced the rising sun, he yawned and shivered. He tore open the pack of cigarettes and shook one out. In an instant he struck a match and cupped his hands around it.
"Well, try," said Harry.
"What's the use? I wouldn't be able to."
"Offer him a cigarette at least," Harry responded with visible irritation.
Mutely, Frank extended the packet of cigarettes toward their visitor.
The man shook his head and said something in Spanish. "Not good for the air," Harry translated. The man thumped his chest and smiled.
The wind rose; sand pelted them. Frank looked out beyond the row of trucks at the choppy and dark ocean. Northward, over the slate water, gulls dove at the surface like indignant imps. Beyond the birds, bobbing lights, white, then red, showed the struggle of a vessel voyaging south. Hard breakers struck the shore repeatedly. They slapped down in quick collapse. High tide had brought the water to within a hundred feet of the bungalow, but it was moving out now. It was time to fish.
Harry cleared his throat. "Where did you find this marvelous deer?" he called to the squatting figure.
The man smiled. He was swallowing the coffee in long quaffs. "Near the mountain Ahuxlt."
"Ah," Harry said, nodding.
Frank frowned. He understood enough Spanish to know what the man's answer had been and he signaled his disbelief in what the man had said with a slight shake of his head in Harry's direction. Their guest blinked at the gesture, but said nothing; the dog lifted his head off the sand.
"That's very far from here," Harry said, glancing into his coffee. "Have you come all that distance on this hunting trip? After this deer?"
"Yes. Two days. Two nights." The man gulped the coffee and wiped his mouth on his arm.
"And you return there now with the deer?" Harry asked.
The man smiled. "Yes, God willing."
Harry tossed the dregs of his coffee out onto the sand and refilled his cup.
"How are things in your village?"
"We are in God's hands
, probably."
"Sometimes it's hard to tell," said Harry with a laugh.
"Si, si. Gracias por el cafe, se?or."
The man swallowed his last mouthful. He rose and placed the cup on the bottom step of the porch. Harry reached over and held up the pot, ready to invite him to share another, but the man shook his head and stooped over his deer. His mutt yawned himself to his feet. The man hoisted his catch over his head and onto his shoulders. When the animal came down, the man staggered with the weight, so much so that Harry started down the steps. But as Harry moved, the visitor held out a broad palm, smiled and turned away. Shuffling forward, he gained speed until all at once he dashed away.
"Adios!" Harry shouted.
The sun had begun to flood the wide expanse of beach with cold morning light and now every human footprint, every bird print or tire track, dappled the surface with cold blue shadows. The clouds, passing low, suddenly opened to reveal the light, a floodlight everywhere, bright and hot. Together Harry and Frank watched the man sprint swiftly away. The thick trunk of the deer completely covered the man's head yet the antlers could be seen jutting out from the man's side. The lean muscles of his back showed clearly in the morning light. The Mayo and his dog headed inland.
"Now, that was really something," said Harry, still standing halfway down the steps, his hands on his hips.
"Damn nonsense," said Frank quietly, but not too quietly for his father to hear.
"That's got to be one of the largest bucks I've ever seen," Harry said, shaking his head. He ambled down the stairs and across the sand to the truck, continuing to study the now vanishing form of the man. "And to carry it on one's shoulders such a distance." He reached into the truck bed and pulled out a cardboard box. Frank stood and stretched.
"Get our poles, will you?" Harry said with a nod of his head toward the bungalow, "And see if Jack's awake."
Frank carried the pot of coffee in with him past the row of cots that were draped with the sprawling forms of sleeping men. Jack Tatum's face on a cot in the corner reminded Frank of the death mask of a Mayan priest. Tequila had done that. The barren front room of the bungalow had a sheet pinned in the dusty front window. Their blankets hung off the cots. Several men were sleeping with bottles near them. From the arsenal of poles leaning against one wall, Frank picked theirs.
When he came out, Harry sat on the tailgate of the truck, the expansive top of a high rubber fishing boot spread in his hands. "Jack's out cold," said Frank. Frank quickly pulled on his fishing boots, took the can of lures and looped the long piece of twine that served as a handle around his neck so that the tackle can hung in front of him.
"Did you find that lure you wanted?" asked Harry, puffing at the exertion of hauling on the first rubber boot.
"Nope."
"What was it? Something special?"
"Not really. It was from a survival kit. A flyer at the hospital gave it to me. Before he died I told him about Mexico and the Sea of Cortez and I promised I'd try it out. I thought I'd try it out today. I'll look for it again tonight."
"Okay." Harry grunted his other leg into the second rubber boot and stood off of the tailgate. "I'll help you look for it. Anything you want to tell me about that guy dying?"
"No," said Frank curtly.
"No?"
"No."
"That man with his buck was really something. Jack won't believe us." Harry said, changing the subject as he lifted a bucket from the truck bed.
"Did he really say he came from Ahuxlt?"
"Yes."
"Well, Pop, I don't know. That's miles away, isn't it?"
Harry closed the tailgate. He took his fishing pole from Frank and swinging the bucket at his side he started toward the shore. "Don't you think he did?"
"No," said Frank, following along behind and then beside his father, "he was trying to impress us. In Chicago I heard all kinds of bullshit stories. Guys will claim any damn thing. I don't think he ever ran that far." He looked over at his father's face. "Not for two days."
"Do you remember me telling you once that I came down here in the nineteen twenties?"
"Yeah, maybe. Why?"
"I was sent down to fix those magnetos that were bad." Harry charged down a small dune ahead of his son.
Frank followed. "Yeah. You told me."
"Well, I don't think I ever told you that I went off into the mountains one weekend when I was there. I came into a village somewhere up in the mountains where some men were kicking a wooden ball. I stayed awake to watch them go by. The path they took was lit with pine torches. The villagers were standing in narrow crevices, in cliffs above, watching. They bet everything they owned on the race. Goats. Chickens. Blankets. The runners ran for two days and they wore rattles to help them stay awake. They'd run a lot longer if they were hungry. Or if their families were. That man we just saw was hungry."
"Well, maybe." The wind rippled Frank's pants against his legs and tore at his shirt. It sounded loud in his ears.
Harry stopped. The strong wind nearly pushed him over. He shifted his feet in the sand and plowed on.
They had reached the hard silver and pink shore. Waves came in with white caps. Harry left the bucket outside the reach of the surf and then plunged immediately into the cool November water.
"What did he shoot the damn thing with?" Frank asked, wading into the water. "Where was his gun? Or his bow?"
"He didn't shoot it, that's the point. He ran it down. Tired it out." Harry nearly shouted over the sound of the wind and waves.
Frank and Harry prepared their tackle without saying anything. They both chose spoon lures to start. Frank waded deeper into the water, shaking his head, and shouting back. "Jeez, Pop. I never realized you were so gullible. A guy could get you to believe any damn thing."
Harry finished tying his lure and attached a few small weights to the line. He double-checked the line while wading to a deeper spot where he leaned back and cast. Out the line spun, cleanly, freely into the spot slightly beyond the break of the surf. The fish would be there at the bottom waiting for food as it was stirred up by the waves. Once he'd put his line where he wanted it, Harry did nothing; he let the water animate the fly. "Does all this cynicism have anything to do with seeing too much death? With the war?" Harry looked over at his son sharply.
Frank recoiled slightly. "No. It's just my personality." Frank cast his line in a half-hearted manner; the wind immediately sent it back. Frank reeled in bitterly, cursing all the while.
He tried to cast his line a second time, and the result was even worse. "Damn it!" Frank shouted as he drew the line back in for another try.
He spent no time preparing the third cast, but lashed out furiously with his reel. The cast was abysmal; the line tumbled in the water at his feet.
"Oh hell!" he said, glancing sheepishly at his father.
Harry was smiling. "You need practice. A lot of practice. I recommend we come down here often."
"I do, too," said Frank.
They both laughed.
The gulls flocked closer. They came down screeching, crying, and swooping on the cool morning air. Frank recast. This time the line went where he wanted about fifteen feet away from his father's.
The sound of the wind and the birds' cries buffeted their ears. A wave swept past them and the water behind it rose over Frank's boots, dousing his pants up to his thighs.
"All I've been hearing since you've been back," Harry began, "is how Chicago taught you so much. How it taught you how damn, damn awful this world is. Where's the happy little kid who used to come down Saturdays to sweep out my shop? This world-weary act is wearing thin. May I remind you that you're only twenty-one?" Harry moved nearer his son and reeled in. He recast so that his line shot out past the churning water and slightly over the slick wall of a gray wave.
Frank reeled in his line.
The clamor from the birds was tremendous. They surrounded the water north of where Harry's line was and then came nearly overhead, diving all around, s
kimming the surface of the water and soaring away. When one bird snapped up something, it turned in the wind for the shore with a myriad of other squawking birds snatching at its bill, crowding close. "A school's coming up!" Harry shouted, pointing to a smooth spot moving differently from the tide.
"Damn birds everywhere!" Frank yelled back. He looked for an opening into the area where he thought the school would be when his line reached the water. He then cast rapidly past the pounding surf, through the flock of birds.
"Ah ha!" Harry shouted. His bait was taken. He kept his thumb on the grip and pumped the rod twice. The tip of the rod nearly reached the water each time before he drew it, slowly, back up. In the close shallows the fish bulldogged, but Harry took in every inch of slack the fish gave. Soon a cluster of weights appeared on the line. Harry dragged the fish toward the shore and waded out.
"I'll come out with you," shouted Frank.
Together they bent over the flopping fish. It was mostly brown, slightly spotted and had a protruding lower jaw. Harry yanked the hook loose from the mouth of the fish with pliers.
"I liked your letters," Harry said, "They were very interesting. Even with all the damns strung out in a row. And please I hope you understand that I'm not wanting to criticize you too much. And I want to sincerely thank you for taking your time when you were in Chicago to write back to me in Arizona. I know you must have been busy."
"That's all right, Pop."
Harry stood and displayed the fish, holding it by its gills. "I estimate this fish might be an eight pounder."
"Probably. But Jack will swear it's less."
Harry laughed. "He will do that, I think. And come to think of it, I don't believe we brought the scales, of all the foolishness."
"It's nice, though."
"Yes."
"Is it a Cabrillo?"
"Cabrilla," Harry said, spreading the slack fins with his fingers. "You can tell by the round fins here."
"It's damn nice anyway. Damn nice markings."
"Sometimes I see a fish like this, but bigger, in my dreams. It's down here in the bottom of El Golfo," said Harry. "A big fish gulping away and swimming up and down. I'm going to get him some day." Harry grabbed the empty bucket and strode to the surf. Still carrying the fish, he filled the bucket with sea water and eased the fish in the bucket's water. It thrashed for a moment and then swam in circles. Harry carried the bucket back to the shore. "There are a few things I've wanted to tell you," Harry said to his son, who was still standing in the shallow water.
"Yeah?"
"I want you to please stop calling me Pop. It sounds idiotic. I'd much rather you called me Dad." After setting the bucket with the fish on the dry sand, he waded in again.
"Okay." Frank shrugged. "Dad it is."
"And, if you're going to continue working with me and fishing with me, I want you please to stop damning everything that crosses your path. It bothers me. I don't do that. I don't have people who work with me who do that. If you're going to continue with me, I want you to stop."
"Okay. No more damning, Dad."
"I'm counting on it." Harry patted his son's shoulder.
That was it, Frank realized. That was some kind of breakthrough he'd wanted.
Harry forged out into the surf again, not turning back to see his son. His knees drove ahead through the sparkling water. With the pith helmet on his head, the khaki uniform and his big rubber boots, Frank thought he resembled an explorer, forcefully storming out of the cold depths where he'd hidden for a century. Or was he just a father, coming from cold obscurity, coming warmly into Frank's life? Frank strode into the surf behind his father.
"The world isn't so bad that it deserves to be cursed constantly," called Harry to his son when Frank had reached a fishing spot roughly parallel to his father.
Sunlight sparkled on the water. The sea around them folded into foam. An icy swell came and caught Frank at his knees, tugging his boots, hugging him snugly.
"No," Frank said, "You're right, Dad. It isn't."
# # # #
The End
# # # #
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