“What run were you coming down?” the nurse asked.
“Devil’s Gulch.”
“Oh boy,” the nurse had said.
But Berg had no time to be angry. Or, rather, he didn’t have the capacity to be angry. He could not think. His head felt like a wide-open field. The field was full of crickets and Tylenol pills and the occasional question from Nell, who drove him to the hospital, where they took an X-ray of his brain to make sure that he wasn’t bleeding internally and then sent him home with a pamphlet about concussions and his first ever bottle of hydrocodone. He sat down on the hotel couch and closed his eyes. He felt off balance and a little queasy and there was often a humming in his ears. At times he felt immensely peaceful and other times he felt afraid and angry. He saw various shapes and overall, he told Nell, it felt a little bit like he was on mushrooms. After the hydrocodone kicked in, he fell asleep on the couch, and then Nell helped him move into bed. In the middle of the night he woke up, terrified that someone was going to break into the house. He lay awake, convinced that it was only a matter of time before someone busted through the door and attacked him and his girlfriend. Eventually he fell back asleep. In the morning, when he woke up, he remembered only certain moments from the previous day. He remembered hitting the mogul and flying face first into the sheet of ice. He remembered someone calling out to him from a chairlift overhead, asking if he was okay. He remembered talking to the nurse at the bottom of the hill. He did not remember getting an X-ray. He did not remember fearing a break-in at midnight.
Nell drove him home the following day. It was a bright day, with a bright sky and a few clouds, very high up, that seemed to have no interest in getting any closer to earth. Berg and Nell listened to a book on tape and blasted the heat and stopped, at one point, to eat cheeseburgers and pie.
“How do you feel?” Nell asked him.
“Better,” he had said. “I feel better already.”
CHAPTER 20
BY MARCH, THEY’D MADE good progress on JC’s sloop. The stem and stern were cut, the frames were up, and the lead keel had been cast. It was around this time that someone stole Alejandro’s van and dumped it in the ravine by the 12. They never figured out who did it but, at some point, Freddie Moltisanti told Uffa that he thought it was a group of teenagers who had taken it. Freddie never said how he knew this, and Alejandro didn’t believe him. Freddie was prone to lying. When he was younger, Freddie had been something of a local celebrity because he ran away from home for a week and lived in a cave. He was twelve years old and, allegedly, he survived on wild apples and several packages of saltines. Alejandro didn’t believe this story either.
In any case, the car was totaled and irretrievable and Alejandro left it in the ravine. A few weeks after it was stolen, JC stopped by the shop. Berg could tell he was important the moment he walked in. People often came by to see Alejandro. Joe Leggett was right that certain people thought Alejandro was crazy, but others clearly respected him. Neighbors would stop in with an extra fish they’d caught or some fresh corn or a root that they were trying to identify. They came around lunchtime and waited patiently outside the barn until Alejandro had finished his work. But JC didn’t do this. He stormed into the barn early one morning with no advance notice. He was a large man, two hundred pounds or so of sauntering muscle, and he wore a red knitted beanie. A smoky, fruity odor clung to him, as if he’d just come from a hookah bar.
“Alejandro!” he shouted. “You guys are doing great things. I need you to come with me for a second. I’m gonna show you something.”
To Berg’s surprise, Alejandro agreed. He had never seen Alejandro put down his work in the middle of the day for some random request. In fact, the most predictable way to irritate Alejandro was to distract him from his work. Now that Berg had done some boatbuilding, he understood why. The work required serious focus and any diversion made it that much more difficult.
As Alejandro and JC walked out of the shop, JC noticed Berg.
“Hey, who are you?” he asked.
Berg looked up from the plank he was spiling and introduced himself.
“This a new guy?” JC said to Alejandro. “You didn’t tell me that you had a new guy.”
“Berg’s been with us for several months now,” Alejandro said.
“Fuck yeah!” JC shouted. “Berg! My man. You’re coming with us, too. Come on.”
Berg looked at Alejandro and Alejandro smiled. “Come on,” he said. “You can finish that later.”
Alejandro and Berg got into JC’s Mercedes and they drove into the hills behind Talinas. Berg sat in the front seat and Alejandro sat in the back.
“I love that new boat you guys built, man,” JC said. “The Alma. I love it. It’s perfect. With the compartments down below. It’s great. What are those made out of again?”
“Iroko,” Alejandro said. “It’s the most durable hardwood we have.”
“Amazing. I love it,” JC said.
He opened the glove box and pulled out a pack of beef jerky, offered some to Alejandro and Berg. There was a gun in the glove compartment. Berg took the beef jerky and chewed it slowly, looked out the window at the bay as it receded from view.
“I heard about your car,” JC said to Alejandro, taking a big bite of the jerky and chewing it loudly. “Some motherfuckers stole your car.”
“Yes,” Alejandro said.
“Motherfuckers,” JC scowled.
After several minutes they rounded a corner and began heading up JC’s driveway. When they got to the top of the driveway, Berg saw Lammy and her kids. They were playing soccer in a grassy field, and behind them, in the distance, Berg could see a house. The house was built in the shape of a mushroom, or perhaps a snail? It was hard to say. Lammy came over and kissed Alejandro on the cheek.
“It’s so good to see you,” she said.
“It’s good to see you, dear,” Alejandro said.
“You showing him his present?” Lammy asked.
“Yep,” JC said.
“You’re gonna like it,” Lammy said, and then she called to the kids and retreated toward the house.
JC winked at Berg and then ushered them over to his garage. He lifted up the door to reveal several motorcycles and a brand new Cadillac. JC motioned toward the Cadillac like a game-show host.
“I bought you a Cadillac,” JC said, grinning at Alejandro. Alejandro stood there silently, staring at the Cadillac. JC motioned to the Cadillac again: “It’s yours,” he said. “Happy birthday. It’s a birthday present. You can take Rebecca out on a drive.”
“But it’s not my birthday,” Alejandro said.
“It’s for your last birthday then, whatever.”
“JC…” Alejandro began.
“You don’t want it,” JC said. “I can tell. You don’t want it. That’s totally fine, man. Totally fine.”
Berg looked at JC fearfully. He had no idea if he was being serious.
“Just do me a favor,” JC said. “Just drive it down to the water. You and Berg. Follow me down to the water in the Cadillac. I’m going to take the Mercedes. Just follow me down. You don’t have to accept the gift.”
He handed Alejandro the keys, hopped into his Mercedes, and cruised down the driveway. Berg’s first thought was, of course, that JC was going to murder them and dump them in the bay. He thought of the gun in the glove compartment. His mouth was dry and tasted like beef jerky.
Alejandro said nothing as they drove down the hill but, Berg noticed, his knuckles were white from gripping the wheel.
“How bad is this?” Berg asked.
“It’s not good,” Alejandro said.
“You should have just accepted the Cadillac.”
“I hate Cadillacs.”
“Jesus. Are we about to get fucked up?”
“I hope not.”
They parked on the turnout by Miller’s Point, about fifteen yards away from the cliff. JC got out of the car and walked over to the Cadillac.
“Okay, put the thing in neutra
l,” he said.
“Look, JC,” Alejandro said, still sitting in the car, the door open. “Let me explain…”
“No, man! You don’t want it! No need to explain. Put the thing in neutral and get out.”
Alejandro put it in neutral and he and Berg exited the car. Then JC asked them to help him push it.
“Push it off the cliff?” Berg said.
“Off the edge, man! Off the edge!”
It was difficult to get the car rolling but JC was an absurdly strong man. With his help, they were able to get it moving and, once it picked up speed, they gave it one last shove and stepped back. Alejandro bent over and panted like a linebacker, but JC walked to the edge of the cliff and watched the Cadillac plummet to the rocks below. It must have been a fifty-foot drop.
“Fuck yeah!” JC yelled and scrambled down a path on the side of the cliff toward the car. Once he was down on the beach, he began picking up rocks and throwing them at the car, smashing its windows, denting the parts of it that were not yet dented from its fall.
“Fuck this Cadillac, man! Fuck it!” he yelled. Berg watched him from the top of the cliff, still slightly terrified, but also relieved. Several minutes later JC scrambled back up the cliff and shook Alejandro’s hand. He was covered in sweat, but he seemed relaxed, like he’d just had a massage.
“Okay, man,” he said. “I’ll drop you guys home now. Happy birthday, Ale.”
CHAPTER 21
ONE SUNDAY, ALEJANDRO OFFERED to take Berg and Uffa out on one of the four boats he kept down by the dock. In the morning they drank coffee and ate rye bread with butter and then they headed down to the water. Alejandro’s dock was shaped like a T and it extended probably thirty feet out into the bay. There were two boats tied up along the body of the T, and two boats further out, tied to the top of the T. On shore, flipped upside down, were several canoes.
“See, this boat here,” Alejandro said, walking over to one of the canoes. “This boat is so light. I built this boat so you could carry it by yourself. See?” He lifted the boat and winced slightly. “It’s perfect,” he said, still wincing, “for going to get your groceries in the morning. When I lived at Dillon Beach, I used to row this down to Five Brooks when I needed provisions. And this one,” he said pointing to a larger boat, “this is the one we’re taking out: Contos.”
The Contos was based on the Greek salmon boats that used to be sailed near Vallejo. She was sprit-rigged and beamy, but still fast and maneuverable. She was capable of carrying over two thousand five hundred pounds of fish and designed to be sailed underweight. The boat had a small cabin and she was equipped with a dory, which fit neatly on her foredeck.
Uffa uncleated the dock lines and shoved the boat off the pier, hopping onto the stern at the last moment. Alejandro’s house was located on the eastern shore of the bay and his pier edged out into a shallow cove. The cove was pretty much clear of obstacles, except for one rock near its center, which was submerged during high tide but visible during low tide, covered with slippery green seaweed. Alejandro had strung two leading lights from madrone trees near the shore so he could navigate past the rock if he had to return after dark.
They tacked their way up to the mouth and crossed the shoal with little difficulty. Once out of the bay, the winds picked up and shifted slightly to the north. To the west they could see the Slide Islands, rocky and brown, and to the east the coastal ridge, with its white, wave-cut bluffs. They sailed south now on a broad reach, less than a mile from the shore. Berg managed the jib, trimming the sheet every once in while to keep the sail full. When they passed the lighthouse they jibed and headed east, toward Wildcat Bay and Estero. This was the bay where the first English explorers had landed in the sixteenth century, looking for treasure. According to Alejandro, they had described the cliffs as reminiscent of the English Channel.
“When I first came here with my father,” Alejandro said. “I thought California was so ugly. I thought it was gray and cold and ugly. I was coming from Tahiti, you know, where everything is very bright and tropical. It wasn’t until I had lived in Talinas for several years that I began to appreciate the beauty here. It’s similar to what we were talking about the other day, Berg,” he said. “It takes time to build affection for something. You have to stay in a place. It doesn’t just happen instantly.”
Once inside the bay, all three of them squeezed into the dory and rowed to shore. They pulled the dory up onto the beach, its bottom scraping against the sand, and then they began to hike east into the estuary. Winter was still holding on, it seemed, and the sky was moon-white and pockmarked. Along the shore delicate herons stood knee-deep in the water and, in the distance, rows of oyster racks lay exposed in the low tide. Berg knew there was some kind of controversy about the oyster farm in Estero but he hadn’t paid close attention to it.
While they were walking, Uffa mentioned that he was thinking about going back to school.
“For what?” Alejandro asked, skeptically.
“MFA,” he said. “Get an MFA in poetry.”
Alejandro took a blue bandanna from his pocket and wiped his nose.
“You don’t approve,” Uffa said, watching him. “I know.”
“Do you want to be a poet?” Alejandro asked, shoving the bandanna back into his pocket.
“I like writing poetry,” Uffa said.
“But where does it lead you?” Alejandro said. “I don’t see the value. The best that can happen is that you create a cult of personality.”
“Are you kidding?” Uffa said. “I totally disagree. It’s art. Art is important. You practice an art yourself.”
“Yes, but it has a practical application.”
“Delivering drugs?”
“I’ve been building boats for years, Uffa, and the boats have been used for all different sorts of things: fishing, traveling…”
“I know, but I mean, c’mon, Ale. Poetry is exciting. It’s beautiful.”
“I know it’s exciting. I’ve no doubt it’s exciting,” Alejandro said. “But it’s a dead end.”
The two of them continued to argue in this fashion for the next several minutes. Alejandro saw poetry and writing as leading to madness. It could only be made on luxury time, he argued, could only be created out of profound boredom. To Alejandro’s mind, poetry distracted from the real work that needed to be done. As an artist, in the best-case scenario, all you did was cultivate your persona. You were left with nothing except an image of yourself as the poet and then you were dead.
“I would rather be in the world,” Alejandro said. “That is what I find beautiful. I’ll take the life of the peasant. Poetry is just empty sophistication. And sophistication is how we got into this whole mess in the first place.”
“I think it’s useful,” Uffa said.
“It leads toward madness in the end, Uffa.”
“That’s what happened to Szerbiak. That’s not what’s going to happen to me.”
“I never said anything about Szerbiak.”
“I know you didn’t.”
Berg had never heard Alejandro articulate his positions on poetry but he was not surprised by them. Alejandro held extreme views about many things. He believed the American empire was crumbling, and in a sense, he had moved his family to the country to build his ark and raise his children by the bay. Still, there was something hard in his voice when he argued with Uffa about poetry, something defensive and pained. Berg had the sense that he only half-believed the things he was saying, which was rare for Alejandro, who usually spoke with conviction. For a moment, Berg began to doubt Alejandro, to doubt his entire reality. Was he just some bitter old hermit? Or was he worth listening to, worth looking up to? The arguments he was making were logical, but they seemed cruel.
Berg had seen pictures of Alejandro with the young Szerbiak. This was when the two of them were both living in Colorado, fresh out of college. Alejandro was working as an anthropologist and Szerbiak was working on his first novel. There was a copy of that book on Alejandro’s
bookshelf. Szerbiak had signed it and written a long inscription. Berg didn’t know what had happened between the two of them. He knew that Szerbiak had died a long time ago, after years of drinking.
When Berg first began to get to know Alejandro, he had the sense that Alejandro and his family had existed in this fashion for all of time. There was something eternal about them. Their life had such a clear rhythm, such steady purpose. It was hard to imagine them being anything other than the people he’d encountered when he first arrived. And yet, clearly, they had forged this world from something altogether different. They had inhabited different existences in different times. All you had to do was look at that picture of Alejandro and Szerbiak, the two of them dressed in sharp black suits, to know that, for Alejandro, many other lives had preceded this one.
CHAPTER 22
THE WESTERN WAS LOCATED on the bay, next door to Gary’s Oysters and Vlasic’s Boat Works. Before settling into its present capacity as a bar, it had served, at different times, as a dry goods store, a horse stable, a brothel, a temporary jail, and a flophouse. It had swinging doors and a fireplace and pool tables that cost seventy-five cents a game. Uffa liked to go there because they served a chi chi, which was the only alcoholic beverage he ever drank, a sweet rum cocktail that tasted like ice cream.
Uffa usually drank his chi chi within two minutes but today he was slipping it slowly. Berg was drinking a beer. To their right a woman was talking about the great deal she got at an outlet store: 50 percent off, when all was said and done. She’d had many coupons. Berg didn’t know anyone here. The Western and the Tavern seemed to have entirely different clientele, even though they were owned and run by the same family. In front of them, on the screen above the bar, there was a college football game. Mississippi was upsetting LSU. The LSU quarterback kept shaking his head, squirting himself in the face with his water bottle.
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