Clay's Way

by Mastbaum, Blair

  He leans down and pulls up the floppy material to see in his tent. He drops the nylon and throws his beer down as hard as he can. Beer foam splashes onto my chest.

  “What’s wrong?” I try to grab his upper arm, harness the dragon before it consumes me in its fiery breath, its razor claws.

  “Don’t touch me.”

  “Clay.” I put my hand on his shoulder. My body resonates with a dull hum that feels like someone’s slipped me too many downers. It’s humiliation. If I were a Samurai, I’d get out my sword and kill myself without a moment’s delay. Rid the world of my disgrace, dishonor, repulsion.

  He jerks his arm away from me. “You fucking fraud!” He’ll be relieved to forget about me. He could easily slip back into the repetitious patterns of his dull, unfulfilling life and forever surf to escape and fantasize about a better life. Maybe he could even find comfort and solace in the fact that he’ll never be satisfied. Mediocre pleasure will fill the void that love should occupy.

  I have to resist an urge to run into Anar’s tent and hug him and listen to him say he loves me.

  Clay runs away from me down the beach, not looking back.

  “Wait!” I have to tell him the truth. I have to make him understand that I know I fucked up doing with Anar. I thought he hated me. I’m scared that all the time we spent together has been erased.

  Anar took it all away from me. He could have stopped me. He knew what he was doing, that hippie boy slut.

  Clay disappears into the dark crooked shadows of cliffs.

  Anar puts the tent back together, from the inside, and turns up his kerosene lantern to high, providing a moon for himself.

  The waves build in size and consistency and a breeze makes the lazy air expressive and vocal.

  Anar sticks his head out of his tent. “Sam?”

  I don’t know what to do or say. I wish he’d just fall asleep. “Yeah?”

  “What are you doing? Come back in. It looks like the storm’s coming.”

  I duck inside. “Yeah, it does. I’m suspicious.”

  This is hurricane season, but never since I can remember have storms come as often as this. Nature is figuring me out and it’s spooky. I’m dealing with a force that makes me as small as a particle of anti-matter in a universe that is so big it scares me to think about it.

  Anar looks confused. “What do you mean?”

  “It’s out to get me.”

  “For what?”

  “I hardly know you. I can’t tell you my secrets.”

  He looks down to his sandy feet and then back up to me. “I’m not worthy of conversation, only a… forget it…”

  Oh, fuck. He’s vocalizing his thoughts. I hate when people do that, which means I’ll be doing it soon. I’m taking on all the worst traits of the people I love, without consciously being aware of it. “I wouldn’t lie to you. What good would it do?” I feel even worse than before I started talking and trying to make him feel better. I’m still being like Clay. I’m a fraud and I can’t stop myself. I lie to Anar to make the situation easier to deal with for me. I beg for love and commitment from Clay, then I jerk off with this vacant hippie boy.

  “Where’d Clay go?”

  “Down the beach. I’m sick of his bullshit.”

  Just as I say this, a thin band of lightening strikes the sea, not very far out. Lightning is rare here--very rare. I’ve only seen it like five times maybe. An empty, vague, painful sensation pervades my body. It hurts really bad and it’s hard to breathe. I feel sick. I have to throw up. I crouch at the door. Acidy liquid burns my throat and tongue and pours out of my mouth.

  Anar looks too confused to help.

  I stand up, a bitter taste in my mouth. I spit out a bunch of little pieces of gross matter that tastes like my stomach lining. I feel my chest. I’m coated in a sticky layer of sweat. I think this is what malaria must feel like. This lying is killing me. “I have to go.”

  I run away before he gets a chance to respond. I don’t want to piss him off because I need him to be here as a base camp. I’m scared to see Clay. I might need a hug when I come back. I imagine I’m a spaceship forging space no one’s ever been to before. I keep Anar in my mind, sitting with headphones on in the heated, dry control room in Houston or whatever.

  He guides me through layers of static radio waves.

  “This is Anar in Ground Control. Sam, do you copy? You’re entering a thin, unstable, outer layer of universe. Come in, Sam. This is control. I’m losing you. Come in, Sam.”

  Chapter 18

  Humid summer night.

  Moon judges as mosquitoes

  Search for deep rich blood.

  When I find Clay, he’s wearing a black hooded sweatshirt that covers his face in darkness. He looks like the Grim Reaper, sitting on the edge of a tide pool in the pounding surf, ignoring waves smacking him in the face and almost knocking him over every time they come in. His sweatshirt sucks up water and hangs heavy on his body.

  I’m scared of him. I’m ashamed and proud and confused.

  He’s lit by bluish moonlight. He throws his hood back and the tint of the full moon’s glow shines on his skin.

  I think of Anar’s hazel eyes. I wish I could stare into them and feel their easy acceptance

  “I know you’re there, stupid.”

  “I wanna talk.”

  “Leave me alone,” he says quietly, but not quite as sadly as I hoped.

  “I want to tell you the truth.”

  “I know the truth.”

  “I’m dying. I’m sorry I haven’t told you before now. It’s leukemia. I have six months, maybe seven.” I’m losing my mind. What the fuck is wrong with me?

  “I don’t care. Go hang out with that kid. He’ll talk to you. I don’t want to. I’m not capable of dealing with things, remember?” He imitates my voice and makes me sound like a whiny brat. He’s jealous. A good sign. He still cares even if he’ll never admit it again.

  “I love you, Clay.” This is the first time I’ve ever been able to say this, even though I’ve thought it hundreds of times. Saying it makes me feel amazing, like it’s my reason for living, the source of all happiness.

  He just sits there with water splashing him in the face, looking out to the dark sea.

  I look up at the sharply eroded cliffs and all of nature has new meaning. The waterfalls emanate tears. The waves are rolls of sad emotions that I can’t overcome. Dead branches are reminders of what was once flourishing. The beauty of this place feels eternally untouchable and far away.

  A sub-division’s predictable patterns, rigid lines, and ordered structure might feel calming. Normally, they feel segregating and stifling, but for once, I’m scared of this infinite disorder and I’m afraid I might get lost in this place where anything is possible. My confusion and my love for Clay has turned dark and incomprehensible. All around me, people know this can happen with love, and they just go on with life. How can they bear it?

  I look at Clay. His head is down and he’s completely soaked. This is the first time that I’ve seen him truly alone.

  He usually has this relationship between his real self and his made-up persona that makes him seem like he’s not alone. Now, he’s silently inside his mind. He seems impenetrable.

  I’ve never seen him so still, even during sleep. I want the resilient, escapist Clay back that wants to forget about all this and fool around. I look at him till my eyes go blurry. I hear the conversations of groups scattered around the beach, growing louder and more abrasive as they drink more, feeling disguised by the veil of night’s darkness.

  A whole group erupts in evil-sounding laughter.

  Clay looks over his shoulder to the laughing group of three guys and four bikini girls down the beach about fifty yards. He probably wishes he could just hang out with them and turn into that cool-boy surfer and forget about my psycho head-trip and me, altogether. He stands up and scratches. It’s the most normal movement he’s made in a long time.

  My heart beats faster.
>
  He takes his sweatshirt off and throws it down on the sand.

  A light shower begins that mists my face with warm drops of water. They taste like salt, like tears. A huge, dark, monstrous-looking cloudbank looms out to sea, lit by the bluish full moon. The front looks hundreds of miles long and as thick as oil.

  I imagine Clay’s dragon tattoo protecting us from the powerful forces of the tropical storm, but I know it won’t.

  He walks determinedly into the churning water with the elegance of jazz, jumping over crashing surf.

  I stand up on a huge rock and watch him.

  He walks deeper into the sea. The shifting water reaches his nipples and embraces his chest in its volume. He dives into a rounded swell and comes up in the face of increasing brutal sets. They smack into him with their full power.

  I run to the water’s edge. The crashing waves are loud and furious. I want to dive in and help him, but I’m too scared. I’d be a useless handicap for him. I feel helpless. I have to find help. I look around, frantically.

  The Australian surfers’ boards are leaning against a coconut tree in the sand.

  I run over to them, a hundred yards away.

  They sit around like wise soothsayers and sip their beers casually, as if nothing horrible’s happening. Their plump bellies and worked out bodies disgust me. They’re gluttonous and arrogant and lazy.

  I sneak back to the coconut tree where their surfboards are leaning, steal a short one, and run off with it. I run to Anar, awkwardly dragging the heavy board under my arm. The tail fins make grooves in the sand. I drop it and duck down to look in his tent.

  He’s lying down. His long, sinewy back is curved in a gentle crescent.

  For a split second, I want to cuddle with him and let Clay walk into the sea as far as he wants to go. “Anar!” I can hardly talk, with feelings of lust and guilt and fear rushing through my veins. “You have to help me!”

  He sits up and I see his flat chest muscles straining. “Fuck off. Are you insane?”

  “Clay’s in trouble. He's in the ocean. He’s getting so far I can barely see him. I’m afraid he’s not gonna come back.” Tears spill out of my eyes and make my vision blurry.

  He gets up, ducks out the door, and looks out to the ocean. He grabs the board under his arm, runs to the ocean, and paddles out through the violent waves.

  I stand on the shore, scared as shit, relying on someone I just exploited to rescue someone I just fucked over. I was following my heart, I thought, and now I’ve sent two people that I love into violent water to save each other. I stand here useless. I feel like I’m watching television. I can see the problem, but I can’t do anything about it. Saline mist burns my eyes and makes the tears come out even faster. I lose sight of them. There’s only black rushing water.

  Clay is killing himself.

  I am dry and still. My brain forms figures and shapes out of the patterns of rushing water. The clouds part from the moon and I see millions of subtly different colors from azure blue reflective surfaces to white fizzy bubbles to deep green waves. I wonder if my brain is fooling me into seeing these colors--like some gland designed to handle death and heavy stress is making me trip.

  I imagine Clay sucking water into his lungs.

  He must be devastated if he’s willing to have spent his whole life surfing, staying on top of the waves, and he now wants to die underneath them. He’s impressive. I never thought he could be so dramatic.

  I twist around. There are a couple lingering campfires slowly being extinguished by the tropical shower.

  Everyone on the beach is having too much fun hanging out and talking to notice what’s going on. To them, I must look like some worried kid watching the ocean hoping for something to happen.

  Anar is exerting every muscle he has, risking his life, forgetting himself for Clay. His valor shines through the mist, while my seedy, incongruous, back-stabbing brain sinks deeper into the Earth, closer to where the burning liquid magma resides, waiting to melt me down and figure out why I’m such an asshole.

  “Sam!” Anar’s voice barely resonates over the waves. “Sam!”

  I run into the water, up to my balls. The waves crash over my head. The water burns the inside of my nose. I get knocked over and twisted around underwater. I’m gonna drown, too. I gasp for air and inhale tons of water. I come up, coughing. Another wave comes towering over me. I aim for the beach. I crash on the sand, out of breath, sand coating my back and scalp. I feel its gritty texture in my mouth. I cough up water that’s warm from my lungs and stomach. I see Anar hanging on the back of the surfboard.

  He pushes the board over a monster wave. He bobs way up in the crest of the wave and the board almost flips in the surf. The riptide sucks out and Anar kicks hard and shoves the board onto the beach. The fin snaps off. The surface of the board is coated with wax so the water beads up.

  Clay’s lying on top like a corpse, not moving.

  “Clay?” Anar leans down over Clay to feel if he’s breathing. “Fuck!”

  He looks up at me, cowering above the wreckage of Clay’s limp body like all look what you’ve done. He looks pissed off and scared for me at the same time.

  Big, dramatic, sad music swells inside my head and I start to imagine life without Clay and spending a lot of time alone in my room, consumed with an unshakable sadness and remorse and drinking for the wrong reasons or whatever and smoking pot all the time, but not for fun, just to kill the horrible dread. “Clay?” I lean down in his face.

  He doesn’t respond.

  My ears pop and a shrill high-pitched buzz infiltrates my head. Big warm raindrops increase. I see them, but I can’t feel them because my mind has shut down all my body’s functions. There’s loud vague noise, like the sky is screaming.

  Clay looks dead.

  Anar and I stare at him, paralyzed.

  “Oh my God.” Anar leans down and cocks Clay’s head back and pushes on his chest. “Luna! Come here!” he screams toward his sister’s tent.

  I don’t like the look of his hands on Clay, but I don’t know where else to look. I’m scared to see a sign of death on Clay’s skin. I’m afraid I’ll see it turn gray and dead. I can’t touch him because he might be cold.

  “Luna! Hurry!” Anar rubs Clay’s chest in quick, bird-like strokes.

  His sister runs up with a serious, almost professional look on her face. She’s wearing her bikini bottom and no top. Her breasts have probably never seen this side of her. “What’s going on?”

  “He drowned. He was...” I point to the ocean, crashing dangerously close to us.

  She leans down next to him and holds her ear on his chest and at the same time, places her finger on his throat. Her breasts rub on his chest. Her nipples trace lines on his skin. Her skills look desperate and deliberate. The economy and precision of her movements around Clay scares me. She’s touching him like a patient. “He’s not breathing,” she bluntly announces, as if talking to a doctor. Panic takes over her expression. “OK,” she tells herself.

  “Oh, fuck.” I say without thinking. “Do something!”

  She pushes his chest with severe movements that look too hard and violent. “Come on! Come on, breathe! One, two, three.”

  She pushes her lips into his and blows a big breath in his mouth that makes his cheeks puff out. “One, two, three. You can do it.” She pushes his chest again, five times in a row. Her movements are quick and exaggerated. Her breasts smash up against his chest, squashed between their bodies. It looks like they’re fucking in some weird porno, but with all my emotions caught up inside of it. She counts and pushes and blows and checks.

  “Get the fuck off of him!” I scream.

  Anar looks at me, shocked. A flash of realization runs through his face.

  I can’t look at him. All I feel is guilt.

  He holds me in his arms and pulls my head close to him, like a wrestling move, trying to restrain me. He squeezes me pretty hard, almost too hard, like he’s devastated he had to see me defe
nd Clay.

  I feel passion and comfort and anger in his arms. I can hear his shallow breathing in my ear. The pressure feels good on my shoulders. I want him to squeeze even harder. I deserve to be squeezed to death. I can’t hear. All I see is blurry snapshots: Clay’s ribs. Anar’s sister’s hair covering Clay’s face, her mouth announcing numbers. Anar’s hands rubbing together. The hairs on Clay’s calf. The sand coating the edge of the black leash attached to the waxy, cream-colored surfboard. Flames painted on the board sticking out from under Clay’s armpit. The reflection of fire in Anar’s eyes.

  Clay wrenches up, his knees forcing up to his chest. His stomach muscles flex and he takes a huge gulp of air and coughs and gags. Water shoots out of his mouth at Anar’s sister’s face. He opens his eyes.

  I jerk away from Anar before Clay can look at me.

  Luna wipes her eyes and resumes her professional act. “Lie back. Breathe. What do you feel like? Can you see clearly?” She wipes his forehead with the side of her hand.

  “Dizzy...” Clay keeps coughing.

  “Cough it up. That’s right. Come on.”

  This girl is starting to annoy me. What is it with nurses? She should leave us alone so we can have our big tear-filled moment of survival. So I can say, “Thank God you’re OK. I love you forever. Let’s ditch these weirdoes and do it” or something cool like that. We should be able to stare longingly into each other’s eyes till we get boners.

  I want to talk to him. I want to tell him that I’m going crazy and that I love him more than I thought possible--that the thought of him dying is unbearable to me--that I never want to leave his side again, but Anar is monitoring me like a doctor looking for a crack in a bone in an x-ray.

  “You need to rest.” Luna says to Clay. She stands up, her boobs bouncing, and looks at Anar and me. “Take him to his tent. Use the surfboard as a stretcher.”

  I take the end with his feet, because I can’t stand looking in his eyes till we’re alone together.

  Luna walks beside us, watching Clay like she’s his lover or something sick like that. She holds her hand over his heart while we carry him over the sand.