Pacific Edge

11

Out.

How I hugged that lawyer. He just looked tired. Lucky, he said. Procedural irregularity.

He drove me to a restaurant. Looking out the car window, stunned. Everything looked different. Fragile. Even America is fragile. I didn’t know that before.

At the restaurant we drank coffee.

What will you do? the lawyer said.

I didn’t have the faintest idea. I don’t know, I said. Go to New York and meet my wife’s ship when it comes in. Get cross country to my kid, find some kind of work. Survive.

There was a newspaper on the next table but I couldn’t look at it. Crisis to crisis, we’re too close to the edge, you can feel the slippage in the heat of the air.

And suddenly I was telling him about it, the heat, the barbed wire, the nights in the dorm, the presence of the hospital, the fear, the courage of all those inside. It’s not fair, I said, my voice straining. They shouldn’t be able to do that to them! I seized the newsaper, shook it. They shouldn’t be able to do any of this!

I know, the lawyer said, sipping his coffee and looking at me. But people are afraid. They’re afraid of what’s happening, and they’re afraid of the changes we would have to make to stop it from happening.

But we’ve got to change! I cried.

The lawyer nodded. Do you want to help?

What do you mean?

Do you want to help change things?

Of course I do! Of course, but how? I mean I tried, when I lived in California I tried as hard as I could….

Look, Mr. Barnard, he said. Tom. It takes more than an individual effort. And more than the old institutions. We’ve started an organization here in Washington, DC, so far it’s sort of a multi-issue lobbying group, but essentially we’re trying to start a new political party, something like the Green parties in Europe.

He described what they were doing, what their program was. Change the law of the land, the economic laws, the environmental laws, the relationship between local and global, the laws of property.

Now there’re laws forbidding that kind of change, I said. That’s what they were trying to get me on.

We know. There are people afraid of us, you see. It’s a sign we’re succeeding. But there’s a long way to go. It’s going to be a battle. And we can use all the help we can get. We know what you were doing in California. You could help us. You shouldn’t just go out there and survive, that would be a waste. You should stay here and help.

I stared at him.

Think about it, he said.

So I thought about it. And later I met with some of his colleagues, and talked about this new party, and met more people, and talked some more. And I saw that there is work here that I can do.

I’m going to stay. There’s a job and I’ll take it. Work for Pam, too. Talked to her on the ship-to-shore, and she sounded pleased. A job, after all, and her kind of work. My kind of work.

It didn’t take all that much to convince me, really. Because I have to do something. Not just write a utopia, but fight for it in the real world—I have to, I’m compelled to, and talking with one of the people here late one night I suddenly understood why: because I grew up in utopia, I did. California when I was a child was a child’s paradise, I was healthy, well fed, well clothed, well housed, I went to school and there were libraries with all the world in them and after school I played in orange groves and in Little League and in the band and down at the beach and every day was an adventure, and when I came home my mother and father created a home as solid as rock, the world seemed solid! And it comes to this, do you understand me—I grew up in utopia.

But I didn’t. Not really. Because while I was growing up in my sunny seaside home much of the world was in misery, hungry, sick, living in cardboard shacks, killed by soldiers or their own police. I had been on an island. In a pocket utopia. It was the childhood of someone born into the aristocracy, and understanding that I understood the memory of my childhood differently; but still I know what it was like, I lived it and I know! And everyone should get to know that, not in the particulars, of course, but in the general outline, in the blessing of a happy childhood, in the lifelong sense of security and health.

So I am going to work for that. And if—if! if someday the whole world reaches utopia, then that dream California will become a precursor, a sign of things to come, and my childhood is redeemed. I may never know which it will be, it might not be clear until after we’re dead, but the future will judge us! They will look back and judge us, as aristocrats’ refuge or emerging utopia, and I want utopia, I want that redemption and so I’m going to stay here and fight for it, because I was there and I lived it and I know. It was a perfect childhood.

Kevin was working at Oscar’s place when he heard the news. He was up on the roof finishing the seal and trim around the bedroom skylights, and Pedro, Ramona’s father, came zooming up on his hill bike, skidding to a stop on the sidewalk. “Kevin?” he called.

“Yeah, Pedro! What’s up?”

Serious look, hands on hips. “Get down here, I’ve got bad news.”

Kevin hustled down the ladder, heart thumping, thinking something’s happened to her, she’s hurt and wants me there.

“It’s Tom,” Pedro said as he reached the ground. Kevin’s heart leaped in a different direction. Just the look on Pedro’s face told him. Deep furrow between his eyebrows. He grasped Kevin’s upper arm. “Their ship was wrecked in a storm, and Tom—he was washed overboard.”

“He what?”

It took some explaining, and Pedro didn’t have all the particulars. Gradually it dawned on Kevin that they didn’t matter. Killed by a storm. Lost at sea. Details didn’t matter.

He sat on a workhorse. Oscar’s front yard was cluttered with their stuff, dusty in the sun. He couldn’t believe it.

“I thought ships didn’t sink these days.” Proud Ganesh flying away from Newport’s jetties.

“It didn’t really sink, but a lot of compartments flooded, and they judged it safer to get out into the lifeboats in case it did sink. It’s still out there wrecked, dead in the water. I guess it was a typhoon, and they got hit by a load of lumber, tore the ship all up.”

Pedro was holding his arm again. Looking up Kevin saw on his face the strain of telling him, the bunched jaw muscles. He looked as much like Ramona as a short gray-haired sixty-year-old man could, and suddenly a spasm of grief arrowed through Kevin’s numbness. “Thanks for telling me.” Pedro just shook his head. Kevin swallowed. From his Adam’s apple down he was numb. He still had a putty knife in his hand. It was Pedro’s kindness he felt most, it was that that would make him weep. He stared at the dirt, feeling the hand on his arm.

Pedro left.

He stood in Oscar’s yard, looking around. Working alone this afternoon. Was that better or worse? He couldn’t decide. He was a lot more solitary than he used to be. He climbed back onto the roof, returned to work on the trim around the skylights. Putty. He sat on the roof, stared at it. When he was a kid he and Tom had hiked in the hills together, sun just up and birds in the trees. Bushwhacking while Tom claimed to be on an animal trail. They’d get lost and Kevin would say, “Animal trail, right Grandpa?” Seven years old and Tom laughing like crazy. Once Kevin tripped and skinned both knees bad and he was about to scream when Tom grabbed him up and exclaimed like it was a great deed, an extraordinary opportunity, and pulled up his own pantlegs to reveal the scars on his knees, then had taken out his Swiss army knife and nicked a scar on each knee, touched their four wounds together and then actually sucked blood from Kevin’s shins, which had shocked Kevin, and spit it in four directions rattling out the nonsense words of an ancient Indian blood oath, until Kevin was strutting around glowing with pride at his stinging knees, badge of the highest distinction, mark of manhood and oneness with the hills.

That evening and the next day, the whole unwanted raft of condolences. He preferred swimming alone. Laps at the pool, thousands of yards.

He made calls to Jill and his parents. Jill gone as usual. He left a message, feeling bad. He got his mother on screen: weird moment of power and helplessness combined as he gave her the news. Suddenly he appreciated what Pedro had done, to come over and tell him like that. A hard thing to do. The little face on the screen, so familiar—shocked by the news, twisted with grief. After an awkward brief conversation they promised each other they would talk again soon.

Later that day he watched Doris cook a dinner for the house, when it was his turn. “You know we don’t have any way to find those friends of his,” she said. “I hope they’ll get in touch with us.”

“Yeah.”

She frowned.

He was angry at the crew of Ganesh, angry at Nadezhda. Then she reached him on the phone and he saw her, arm in a sling, grim, distracted. He recalled what Tom had told him of her life, a tough one it sounded. She told him what she knew of the wreck. Four other crew members missing, apparently they had been trapped in a forward compartment and had tried to make their way back over the deck. Tom had disappeared in the chaos of the foundering, no one sure what had happened to him. Disappeared. Everyone had thought he was in one of the other lifeboats. She went on until Kevin stopped her. He asked her to come back to El Modena, he wanted her to return, wanted to see her. She said that she would, but she looked tired, hurt, empty. When the call was over he couldn’t be sure if she would come or not. And then he really believed in the disaster. Tom was dead.

They finished the work on Oscar’s house a couple of weeks later, in the burning heat of late September. They walked around it in their work boots and their greased, creased, and sawdusted work-shorts, brown as nuts, checking out every little point, the seal on the suntek and cloudgel, the paint, the computer (ask it odd questions it said “Sorry I fail the Turing test very quickly”), everything. Standing out in the middle of the street and looking at it, they shook Oscar’s hand and laughed: it looked like a clear tent draped over one or two small dwellings, red and blue brick facades covered by new greenery. Oscar did a dance shuffle to the front door, singing “I’m the Sheik, of Ar—a—bee” in a horrible baritone. “And your love, belongs, to meee,” pirouetting like the hippopotami in Fantasia, mugging Valentino-like swoops at Jody and Gabriela, who squeaked “Don’t—stop—don’t—stop” in unison, pushing him back and forth between them.

Inside they split up and wandered through the rooms, looking things over. Kevin came across Oscar and Hank standing together in the central atrium. Hank said, “These black pillars are neat. They give it an Egyptian Roman wrapped in plastic look that I like.”

Oscar looked around dazed. “Egyptian Roman, wrapped in plastic,” he murmured. “I always dreamed of it.”

Kevin went back out front to get a beer from his bike basket.

Ramona appeared down on Laurinda, pedaled up to him. He waved and put down the dumpie, feeling strange. They had talked briefly several days before, after the news about Tom came in. Condolences.

“Hi,” she said, “How are you?”

“Fine. We’re just having a little celebration here.”

“All done?”

“Yep.”

“Hopefully Oscar will have a housewarming?”

“I think so, yeah. This is just an informal thing, the inside’s still a mess.”

She nodded. Pursed her lips. The furrow between her eyebrows appeared, reminding Kevin sharply of Pedro. “You okay?” Ramona said.

“Oh yeah, yeah.”

“Can… can I have a talk with you?”

“Sure.”

“Now’s not a bad time?”

“No, no. Here, let’s walk up the street, if you want.”

She nodded gratefully, eyes to the ground. They walked up the bike path, her bike between them. She seemed nervous, awkward, uncomfortable—as she had been, in fact, ever since her birthday. It made Kevin weary. Looking at her, the long stride, the sun bouncing off glossy black hair, he felt an ache of desire for her company—just that, nothing more. That he would lose even her friendship. “Listen, Ramona, it’s all right.”

She shook her head. “It’s not all right.” Voice muffled. “I hate what’s happened, Kevin, I wish it never would have.”

“No!” Kevin said, shocked. “Don’t say that! It’s like saying…”

He didn’t know how to finish, but she nodded, still looking down. All in a rush she said, “I know, I’m glad too, but I didn’t ever want to hurt you and if it means I did and we can’t be friends anymore, then I can’t help but wish it hadn’t happened! I mean, I love you—I love our friendship I mean. I want us to be able to be friends!”

“It’s okay, Ramona. We can be friends.”

She shook her head, unsatisfied. Kevin rolled his eyes, for the sake of himself alone, for his own internal audience (when had it appeared?). Here he was listening to himself say things again, completely surprised by what he heard coming out of his own mouth.

“Even if—even if…” She stopped walking, looked at him straight. “Even if Alfredo and I get married?”

Oh.

So that was it.

Well, Kevin thought, go ahead and say something. Amaze yourself again.

“You’re getting married?”

She nodded, looked down. “Yes. We want to. It’s been our whole lives together, you know, and we want to… do it all. Be a family, and…”

Kevin waited, but she appeared to have finished. His turn. “Well,” he said. He thought to himself, you make a hell of a crowbar. “That’s quite a bit of news,” he said. “I mean, congratulations.”

“Oh, Kevin—”

“No, no,” he said, reaching out toward her, hand stopping; he couldn’t bring himself to touch her, not even on the forearm. “I mean it. I want you to be happy, and I know you two are… a couple. You know. And I want us to go on being friends. I mean I really do. That’s been the worst part of this, almost, I mean you’ve been acting so uncomfortable with me—”

“I have been! I’ve felt terrible!”

He took a deep breath. This was something he had needed to hear, apparently; it lifted some weights in him. Just under the collarbones he felt lighter somehow. “I know, but…” He shrugged. Definitely lighter.

“I was afraid you would hate me!” she said, voice sharp with distress.

“No, no.” He laughed, sort of: three quick exhalations. “I wouldn’t ever do that.”

“I know it’s selfish of me, but I want to be your friend.”

“Alfredo might not like it. He might be jealous.”

“No. He knows what it means to me. Besides, he feels terrible himself. He feels like if he had been different before…”

“I know. I talked to him, a little.”

She nodded. “So he’ll understand. In fact I think he’ll feel a lot better about it if we aren’t… unfriendly.”

“Yeah. Well…” It seemed he could make the two of them feel better than ever. Great. And himself?

Suddenly he realized that what they were saying now wouldn’t really matter. That years would pass and they would drift apart, inevitably. No matter what they said. The futility of talk.

“You’ll come to the wedding?”

He blinked. “You want me to?”

“Of course! I mean, if you want to.”

He took a breath, let it out. A part of his mind under clamps sprang free and he wanted to say Don’t, Ramona, please, what about me? Quick image of the long swing no. He couldn’t afford to think of it. Find it, catch it, clamp it back down, lock it away. Didn’t happen. Never. Never never never never never.

She was saying something he hadn’t heard. His chest hurt, his diaphragm was tight. Suddenly he couldn’t stand the pretense any more, he looked back down the street, said “Listen, Ramona, I think maybe I should get back. We can talk more later?”

She nodded quickly. Reached out for his forearm and stopped, just as he had with her. Perhaps they would never be able to touch again.

He was walking back down the street. He was standing in front of Oscar’s. Numbness. Ah, what a relief. No pleasure like the absence of pain.

Hank was around the side of the house, loading up his bike’s trailer. “Hey, where’d you go?”

“Ramona came by. We were talking.”

“Oh?”

“She and Alfredo are going to get married.”

“Ah ha!” Hank regarded him with his ferocious squint. “Well. You’re having quite a week, aren’t you.” Finally he reached into his trailer. “Here, bro, have another beer.”

Alfredo and Matt’s proposition got onto the monthly ballot, and one night it appeared on everyone’s TV screens, a long and complex thing, all the plans laid out. People interested typed in their codes and voted. Just under six thousand of the town’s ten cared enough to vote, and just over three thousand of them voted in favor of the proposition. Development as described to be built on Rattlesnake Hill.

“Okay,” Alfredo said at the next council meeting, “let’s get back to this matter of rezoning Rattlesnake Hill. Mary?”

Ingratiating as ever, Mary read out the planning commission’s latest draft, fitted exactly to the proposition.

“Discussion?” Alfredo said when she was done.

Silence. Kevin stirred uncomfortably. Why was this falling to him? There were hundreds of people in town opposed to the plan, thousands. If only the indifferent ones had voted!

But Jean Aureliano was not opposed to the plan. Nor her party. So it was up to the people who really cared. The room was hot, people looked tired. Kevin opened his mouth to speak.

But it was Doris who spoke first, in her hardest voice. “This plan is a selfish one thrust on the community by people more interested in their own profit than in the welfare of the town.”

“Are you talking about me?” Alfredo said.

“Of course I’m talking about you,” Doris snapped. “Or did you think I had in mind the parties behind you putting up the capital? But they don’t live here, and they don’t care. It’s only profits to them, more profits, more power. But the people who live here do care, or they should. That land has been kept free of construction through all the years of rampant development, to destroy it now would be disgusting. It would be a wanton act of destruction.”

“I don’t agree,” Alfredo said, voice smooth. But he had been stung to speech, and his eyes glittered angrily. “And obviously the majority of the town’s voters don’t agree.”

“We know that,” Doris said, voice as sharp as a nail. “But what we have never heard yet from you is a coherent explanation of why this proposed center of yours should be located on the hill instead of somewhere else in the town, or in some other town entirely.”

Alfredo went through his reasons again. The prestige, the esthetic attraction of it, the increased town shares. On each point Doris assailed him bitterly. “You can’t make us into Irvine or Laguna, Alfredo, if you want that you should move there.”

Alfredo defended himself irritably. The other council members pitched in with their opinions. Doris mentioned Tom, started to tell them what Tom had been working on when he died—dangerous territory, Kevin thought, since they had never heard from Tom’s friends. And since much of the material had been taken from Avending by Doris herself. But Alfredo cut her off before she got to any of that. “It was a great loss to all of us when Tom died. You can’t bring him into this in a partisan way, he was simply one of the town’s most important citizens, and in a way he belonged to all of us. I think it very well might be appropriate to name any center built on Rattlesnake Hill after him.”

Kevin laughed out loud.

Doris cut through it, almost shouting: “When Tom Barnard died he was doing his damndest to stop this thing! To suggest naming the center after him when he opposed it is obscene!”

Alfredo said, “He never told me he opposed it.”

“He never told you anything,” Doris snarled.

Alfredo hit the tabletop, stung at last. “I’m tired of this. You’re getting into the area of slander when you imply that there’s illegal capital behind this venture—”

“Sue me!” Doris shouted. “You can’t afford to sue me, because then your funding would be revealed for sure!” Kevin nudged her with his knee, but as far as he could tell she didn’t even feel it. “Go ahead and sue me!”

Shocked silence. Clearly Alfredo was at a loss for words.

“Properly speaking,” Jerry Geiger said mildly, “this is only a discussion of the zoning change.”

“It’s the zoning makes the rest of it possible!” Doris said. “If you want to go on record against the development, here’s where you act.”

Jerry shrugged. “I’m not sure that’s true.”

Matt Chung decided to follow that tack, and talked about how zoning gave them options. Alfredo and Doris hammered away at each other, both getting really angry. It went on for nearly an hour before Alfredo slammed his hand down and said imperiously, “We’ve been over this before, five or six times in fact. We have the testimony of the town, we know what people want! Time to vote!”

Doris nodded curtly. Showdown.

They voted by hand, one at a time. Doris and Kevin voted against the proposed zoning change. Alfredo and Matt voted for. Hiroko Washington voted against. Susan Mayer voted for. And Jerry voted for.

“Ah, Jerry,” Kevin said under his breath. No rhyme nor reason, same as always. Might as well flip a coin.

So the zoning for Rattlesnake Hill was changed, from 5.4 (open space) to 3.2 (commercial).

Afterwards Kevin and Doris walked home. There it stood, a bubble of light in a dark orange grove, looking like a Chinese lantern. Behind and above it the dark bulk of the hill they had lost. They stopped and looked.

“Thanks for doing the talking tonight,” Kevin said. “I really appreciate it.”

“Damn it,” Doris said. She turned into him, and he hugged her. He leaned his head down and put his face on the part of her straight black hair. Familiar fit, same as it ever was. “Damn it!” she said fiercely, voice muffled by his chest. “I’m sorry. I tried.”

“I know. We all tried.”

“It’s not over yet. We can take it to the courts, or try to get the Nature Conservancy to help us.”

“I know.”

But they had lost a critical battle, Kevin thought. The critical battles. The Flyer’s polls showed solid support for Alfredo. People thought he was doing a good job, dynamic, forward-looking. They wanted the town shares higher. Things were changing, the pendulum swinging, the Greens’ day had passed. To fight business in America… it was asking for trouble, always. Kick the world, break your foot.

They walked into the house, arms around each other.

Kevin couldn’t sleep that night. Finally he got up, dressed, left the house. Climbed the trail up the side of Rattlesnake Hill, moving slowly in the dark. Rustle of small animals, the light of the stars. In the little grove on top he sat, arms wrapped around his knees, thinking.

For a while he dozed. Uneasily he dreamed: he was in bed down in the house when a noise outside roused him, and he got up, went down the hall to the balcony window at the north end of the horseshoe. He looked down into the avocado grove, and there by the light of the moon he saw it again—the shape. It stood upright, on two legs, big and black, a node of darkness. It looked up at him, their gazes met and the moonlight flashed in its eyes, vertical slits of green like a big cat’s eyes. Through the window he could hear the thing’s eerie chuckle-giggle, and the hair on the back of his neck rose, and suddenly he felt as if the world were a vast, dark, windy place, with danger suffusing every part of its texture, every leaf and stone.

He jerked out of it. Too uneasy to wake up fully, he dove back below again, into sleep. Uneasy sleep, more dreams. A crowd on the hill.

When finally he woke to full consciousness, he got up and walked around the hilltop. It was just before dawn.

He found he had a plan. Somewhere in the night… he shivered, frightened by what he didn’t know. But he had a plan. He thought about it until sunrise, and then, stiff and cold, he walked back down to home and bed.

The next morning he went to talk to Hank about his plan. Hank thought it was a good idea, and so did Oscar. So they went to talk to Doris. She laughed out loud. “Give me a couple of days,” she told them. “I can make it by then.”

“I’ll let people know what’s happening,” Hank said. “We’ll do it Sunday.”

So on Sunday morning they held a memorial service for Tom Barnard, up on Rattlesnake Hill. Doris had cast a small plate, ceramic overlaid on a bronzelike alloy, with the overlay making a bas-relief border, and in the corners, animal figures: turtle, coyote, horse, cat. In the middle, a brief message:

Hank conducted a brief ceremony. He was dressed in his Unitarian minister’s shirt, and at first he looked like he was in costume, his face still lined and brick-red with sun, his hair still a tangle. And when he spoke it was in the same Hank voice, nothing inflated or ministerial about it. But he was a minister, in the Unitarian Church (also in the Universal Life Church, and in the World Peace Church, and in the Ba’hais), and as he talked about Tom, and the crowd continued to collect on the crown of the hill—older people who had known Tom all their lives, younger people who had only heard of him or seen him in the canyonlands, members of Hank’s congregation, friends, neighbors, passersby, until there were two or three hundred people up there—all of them listened to what Hank had to say. Because there was a conviction in Hank, an intensity of belief in the importance of what they were doing, that could not be denied. Watching him Kevin lost his sense of Hank as daily partner and friend, the rapid voice tumbling words one over the next picked Kevin up and carried him along with the rest of them, into a shared sense of values, into a community. How Hank could gather them, Kevin thought. Such a presence. People dropping by the work sites to ask Hank about this or that, and he laughing and offering his advice, based on some obscure text or his own thoughts, whatever, there was never any pretense to it; only belief. It was as if he were their real leader, somehow, and the town council nothing at all. How did he do it? A matter of faith. Hank was certain they were all of them spiritual beings, in a spiritual community. And as he acted on that belief, those who had anything to do with him became a part of it, helped make it so.

“People die, rivers go on. Mountains go on.”

He talked about Tom, told some of Tom’s life story, incidents he had observed himself, other people’s stories, Tom’s stories, all in a rapid patter, a rhythm of conviction, affection, pleasure. “See one thing he does, know the rest. Now some of you know it and some of you don’t, but this hilltop was nothing but prickly pear and dirt till Tom came up here. All these trees we stand under were planted by Tom when he was a boy, to give this hilltop some shade, to make it a good place to come up and look around, take a look for the ocean or the mountains or just down into town. And he kept coming up here for the rest of his life. So it’s fitting that we make this little grove his memorial. It was a place he liked, looking over a place he loved. We don’t have his body to bury, but that’s not the important part of him anyway. Doris has cast a plaque and I’ve cut a flat spot into this big sycamore here, and all of us who care to, can help nail it in. Take a light whack so everyone can get a shot at it, and try not to miss and hit Doris’s handiwork. It looks like the ceramic might break off.”

“Are you kidding?” Doris said. “This is a new secret bonding, the ceramic and the metal interpenetrate each other.”

“Like us and Tom’s spirit, then. Okay, swing away.”

And so they stood the plate against the largest sycamore in the grove, about head high, and passed out a few hammers from Hank’s collection, and they swirled around the tree in a loose informal knot, chatting as they waited their turn to tap one of the four nails into the tree.

Wandering around greeting people Kevin saw Ramona, who gave him a big smile. He smiled back briefly, feeling serious, calm, content.

Ah. There down the slope a ways stood Alfredo, looking dark. Kevin felt a quick surge of bitter triumph. He decided that it wasn’t a good time to talk to him. Best not to get into an argument at his grandfather’s funeral.

But Alfredo brought the argument to him. Kevin was standing away from the crowd, watching it and enjoying the casual feel of it, the sense of neighborhood party. Tom would have liked that. Then Alfredo came up to him and said angrily, “I should think you’d be ashamed of using your grandfather’s death like this.”

Kevin just looked at him.

“How do you think it would make Tom feel?”

Kevin considered. “He would love it.”

“This doesn’t change anything, you know. We can build around it.”

Kevin shook his head, looking past Alfredo, up at the grove. “This changes everything. And you know it.” All of the people there would now think of the hill as a shrine, inviolate, and as they all had friends and family down below… Little ghost of his hatred: “Don’t fuck with this hill any more, Alfredo. There’s no one will like you if you do.”

Then he saw who was standing before the memorial tree, about to take a swing with a hammer. He pointed. Alfredo turned around just in time to see Ramona smack a nail, then pass the hammer along.

That would make the difference. Alfredo would never dare cross Ramona on an issue this charged, not given everything else that had happened, the way it had all tangled together.

“Build it somewhere else,” Kevin said harshly. “Build it down in town, by Santiago Creek or somewhere else nice. Tell your partners you gave it a try up here, and it didn’t work. Whatever. But leave this hill alone.”

Alfredo turned and walked away.

Later Kevin went to the tree to put the final knocks on all four nails: one for Nadezhda, one for his parents, one for Jill, one for himself. He touched the broken bark of the tree. Warm in the sunlight. This living tree. He couldn’t think of a better memorial.

After the ceremony, Hank’s idea of a wake: a party in Irvine Park, lasting all that afternoon. A lot of beer and hamburgers and loud music, flying frisbees, ecstatic dogs, barbeque smoke, endless innings of sloppy softball, volleyball without lines or scoring.

In the long summer twilight people drifted away, coasting down Chapman, their bike lights like a string of fireflies flickering between the trees. Kevin biked home alone, feeling the cool sage air rush over him. A good life, he thought. The old man had a good life. We can’t ask for anything more.

So it came about that one morning Kevin Claiborne woke, under an orange tree in his house. Big day today: Ramona and Alfredo were getting married in the morning, and in the afternoon they were having the reception down in the park, next to the softball diamonds. Half the town would be there.

A late October day, dawning clear and cool. Hot in the afternoon. The best time of the year.

Kevin went down to their street project to work by himself for a while, leveling the new dirt. Filling in holes, thinking about the day and the summer. Thought like a long fast guitar solo, spinning away inside him. It was hard to focus on anything for more than a second or two.

Back home he dressed for the wedding, putting on his best shirt and the only dressy slacks he owned. Admittedly still casual, but not bad looking. Colorful, anyway: light green button-down shirt of the young exec style, and gray slacks, with creases and everything. No one could say he had underdressed for Ramona’s wedding. Hopefully he wasn’t overdressed.

He had given the matter of a wedding gift some thought. It was tough, because he wanted it to be nice without in any way suggesting that he was trying to intrude on their daily life, to remind them of him. Kitchen implements were therefore out, as well as a lot of other things. Nothing for the bedroom, thanks. He considered giving them something perishable, but that didn’t seem right either. Might look like a comment in its own way, and besides, he did kind of want them to have something around, something Ramona might see from time to time.

Ornamental, then. He decided on a flowerpot made from scraps of the oakwork in Oscar’s study. Octagonal, a neat bit of woodwork, but rough in a way that suggested outdoors. A porch pot. Bit sticky with the last coat of varnish, and he needed to get a plant for it. But it would do.

He biked to Santiago Creek Park with a trailer to carry everything. Okay, he told himself. No moping. No skeleton at the feast, for God’s sake. Just put a good face on it. Otherwise better to not go at all.

He did fine. He found himself numb, and was thankful for that. He sat with the Lobos and they joked about the possibilities of playing with a pregnant shortstop and so on, and he never felt a twinge. The Sanchezes swept in beaming and the Blairs too, and Ramona walked down the path to the sound of Jody’s guitar, by the stream in a long white Mexican wedding dress looking just like herself, only now it was obvious how beautiful she was. Kevin merely breathed deeply, felt his strength. He was numb. He understood now how actors could take on a role, play a part, as in Macbeth. They did it by erasing themselves, which allowed them to become what they played. He was learning that ability, he could do it.

Hank stood in the gazebo by the stream, in his minister’s shirt again. His voice lifted and again he took them away, just as always. Kevin recalled him dusty in the yard, saying, “Ain’t nothing written in stone, bro.” Now he led Ramona and Alfredo through their marriage vows, “for as long as you both shall live.” It’s not stone, Kevin thought, we write these things in something both more fragile and more durable. Hank made him see it. You could believe in both because both were true. These were vows, sure enough. But vows were only vows. Intentions—and no matter how serious, public, heartfelt, they were still only vows. Promises. The future still loomed before them, able to take them anywhere at all. That was their great and terrible freedom. The weird emptiness of the future! How we long to fill it in, now, in the present; and how completely we are denied.

The wedding partners exchanged rings. Hers went on easily, her fingers were so slim. Blank out, Kevin, blank out. You don’t know anything about her fingers. His they had trouble with; finally Hank muttered, “Let it stay there above the knuckle, the beer’s getting warm.” They kissed. At Hank’s instigation the crowd applauded loudly, cheered. Kevin clapped hard, teeth clamped together. Hit his hands against each other as hard as he could, sure.

Picnic party in the park. Kevin set about getting unobtrusively drunk. The Lobos had a game to play but he didn’t care. Danger to his long-forgotten hitting streak! He only laughed and refilled a paper cup with champagne. It didn’t matter, it meant nothing. The laws of chance had bent in his corner of the world, but soon enough they would snap back, and neither the bend nor the snap would be his doing. He didn’t care. He drank down his glass, refilled. Around him people were chattering, they made a sound like the sea.

He saw the wedding couple in an informal reception line, laughing together shoulder to shoulder. Handsome couple, no doubt about it. Both perfect. Not like him. He was a partner for someone like, say, Doris. Sure. He felt a surge of affection for Doris, for her bitter fight against Alfredo in the council meeting, for her pleasure in the plan for Tom’s memorial. They had almost become partners, she had wanted it. How had they ever drifted apart? It had been his fault. Stupid man. He had learned enough to understand what her love had meant, he thought. Learned enough to deserve it, a little. Stupid slow learner, he was! Still, if something as flawed as the wedding couple could be made right… He refilled, went looking for Doris.

He spotted her in a group of Lobos, and watched her: small, round, neat, the sharp intelligence in that big laugh, the sense of fun. Wild woman. Down to earth. Could talk about anything to her. He walked over, feeling warmth fill him. Give her a hug and she would hug back, she would know what it meant and why he needed it.

And sure enough she did.

Then she was talking with Oscar, they were laughing hard at something. Oscar hopped up and began doing a ballerina routine on a bench. He wavered, she took a chop at the back of his knee. “Hey there.” He hopped down, staggered gracefully her way, she leaned into him and pretended to bite his chest. They were laughing hard.

Kevin looked into his cup, retreated back to the drinks table. He looked back at Doris and Oscar. Hey, he thought. When did that happen? All the desire he had ever felt for Doris in the years they had been friends surged into a single feeling. She’s mine, he thought sharply. It’s me she liked, for years and years. What did Oscar think he was doing? Doris loved him, he had felt it that night in Bishop, or after the council fight, almost as strong as ever. If he started over, asserted himself, told Doris he was ready now, just like Alfredo had told Ramona—

… Oh. Well, it was true. Situations repeat themselves endlessly; there aren’t that many of them, and there are a lot of lovers in this world. Perhaps everyone has been at every point of the triangle, sure.

Kevin walked behind a tree. He couldn’t see his friends, could only hear their two voices, ragging each other vigorously, to the delight of the teammates nearby. When had they gotten to be such friends? He hadn’t noticed. Last he knew they were sniping for real, and Doris seemed serious in her dislike. And Oscar was so fat!

He felt bad at that. Oscar was a good friend, one of his best. Oscar was great. He learned things from Oscar, he laughed and he made Oscar laugh. There was no one like Oscar. And if something was starting between him and Doris—

Again the intense burning flush. Jealousy, possessiveness. “Hey,” he said to the tree. Feeling betrayed. “God damn.” How many people, how many things could go wrong? He had thought his cup full, there.

He shook himself like a dog just out of the surf. Remembered how he had felt about Alfredo. He laughed shortly at himself. Raised his cup to the couple behind the tree. Drained it. Went to get more, feeling virtuous and morose.

It was a relief when the game started. Make-up for a postponed game, it was supposed to count but no one cared. Kevin pounced on the grounders that came his way, threw people out with a fierce pleasure in the act, in the efficiency and power of it. Mongoose jumping on cobras. Third baseman Kevin Claiborne. The phrase, spoken in a game announcer’s voice, had resounded in his mind millions of times when he was a kid. Maybe billions. Why the appeal of those words? What makes us become what we become? Third base like a mongoose, this announcer had always said. Third base like a razor’s edge. And here he was doing it. That broke her heart.

They were playing Hank’s team, the poor Tigers, who rose above their heads to give them a challenge. Ramona, looking much more like herself in her gym shorts and T-shirt, played a sparkling shortstop, so that between them it was a defensive show. “We’ve got this side shut down entirely,” she told him after another hot play. Low scoring game.

He hit as always. Walk to the plate and turn off the brain. Easy today. Swing away. Line drive singles, no problem. Not a thought.

Bottom of the last inning they were down a run, confident of a come-from-behind victory. But suddenly they were down to their last out, the tying run on first. Ramona was up, and Kevin walked out to the on-deck circle swinging a bat, and out of the blue he thought, if Ramona gets out then the game is over, and I’ll have batted a thousand for a whole season.

He took a step back, shocked at himself. Where had that come from? It was a bad thought. Bad luck and maybe worse. It wasn’t like him, and that frightened him. What makes us…?

Ramona hit a single. Everyone yelling. Two on, two out, one run down. Game on the line. If only that thought hadn’t come into his head! He didn’t mean it! It wasn’t like him, he never thought like that. It wasn’t his thought.

Into the batter’s box, and the world slipped away. Make sure you touch the right home plate, he thought crazily. Tim, the Tigers’ pitcher, nodded once at him, disdaining to walk the man who was batting a thousand. Kevin grinned, nodded back at him. Good for Tim, he thought—and that was his thinking, back in control. Good. Everything forgotten, the luck, the curse, the world. Tim’s arm swung back and then under, releasing the ball. Up it lofted, into the blue sky, big and round, spinning slowly. All Kevin’s faculties snapped together in that epiphany of the athlete, in the batter’s pure moment of being, of grace. An eternal now later and the ball was dropping, he stepped forward with his lead foot, rocked over his hips, snapped his wrists hard. He barely felt the contact of bat and ball, right on the button and already it was shooting like a white missile over Damaso and out into right center. Clobbered it!

He ran toward first slowly, watching the ball. Hank, out in center field, had turned and was racing back; he put his head down and ran, thick short legs pumping like pistons. Forty-six years old and still running like that! And in his minister’s shirt no less. He glanced over his shoulder, adjusted direction, ran an impossible notch faster, watched the ball all the way. It was over his head, falling fast to his backhand side—he sprinted harder yet, leaped up, snagged the ball at full extension, high in the air—fell, hit the ground and rolled. He stood up, glove high. And there in an ice-cream-cone bulge was the ball. Catch.

Kevin slowed down, approaching second. Confused. He had to laugh; he had forgotten how to leave the field after making an out. He stood there, feeling self-conscious. Game over, so there was no need to rush.

Hank had taken the ball from his glove. Now he was inspecting it with a curious pained expression on his face, as if he had, with a truly remarkable shot, killed a rabbit After a while he jerked, shrugged, ran back in. He jogged up to Kevin and gave him the ball. “Sorry about that, Kev,” he said rapidly, “but you know I figured you’d want me to give it a try.”

“That was one hell of a try,” Kevin said, and the crowd around them laughed.

“Well, what the hell—I guess batting nine-ninety-four for the year ain’t such a bad average, anyhow.”

Then everyone was cheering and clapping him on the shoulder. The Tigers mobbed Hank, and for a moment as they left the field Kevin was mobbed too, lifted up by the legs and carried on the shoulders of his teammates, so that he could look across at Hank, being carried the same way. Then he was back on the ground, in the dugout. Taking off his cleats.

Slowly the shoes slipped off.

Doris plopped beside him. “Don’t feel bad, Kevin, it was a good hit. Hank made a super catch.”

“It’s not that,” Kevin said, rubbing his forehead distractedly.

“Ah.” She put an arm around his shoulder. “I understand.”

She didn’t, actually. But when people said that, it wasn’t exactly what they meant. Kevin knew what she meant. He blew out a breath, feeling her arm over his back, and nodded at the dirty red concrete.

The reception rolled on through the afternoon, and the band set up and the dancing began. But after a few more drinks Kevin slipped away to his bike, uncoupled his trailer and rode off.

He was feeling low. Mostly because of Tom. He needed to talk to Tom, needed that grinning ancient face staring into his and telling him he was taking it all too seriously. Nine-ninety-four is actually better than a thousand, Tom would say. Could it really be true he would never talk to Tom Barnard again? The loss of that. Too much to imagine.

Biking down Redhill he gnawed at the thought, helpless before it. It was the worst of all the recent events, worst because it was irrevocable. Ain’t nothing written in stone, bro—but death is written in stone, written in ceramic and bronze to outlive the generations of bodies, minds, spirits, souls—all gone, and gone for good. Lives like leaves. And he needed to talk to him, needed his advice and his jokes and his stories and his weirdness.

“Grandpa,” he said, and shifted his hands down the handlebars to race position, and coasted for a second so he could yank up viciously on his toe clip straps, crushing his feet to the pedals. And he started to ride hard.

Wind blasted him, and the tops of his thighs groaned. They pulsed through the lactic build-up, a hot pain that slowly shifted to a fierce, machinelike pumping. His butt and the palms of his hands and the back of his neck bothered him as he settled through the other transient pains of hard biking. He breathed harder and harder, until his diaphragm and the muscles between his ribs were working almost as hard as his thighs, just to get the oxygen into him and the CO2 out of him, faster and faster. Sweat dried on his forearms, leaving a whitish coating under the hairs. And all the while a black depression settled in his stomach, riding up and down rhythmically with every heave of his lungs, filling him from inside until he hurt, really hurt. Strange that emotion alone could make this kind of pain. That broke her heart. He was going to bike it out of him, the machine was nothing more than a rolling rack to expunge this pain, and the world that made it. He was south now, firing down Highway Five at full speed, dodging other traffic and taking the smooth curves of the downhill in tight, perfect lines. Toes pointed down to shift the calf muscles being used. Push down/pull up, push down/pull up, over and over and over and over and over, until the bike’s frame squeaked under the stress. Fly south, flee that whole life, that whole world!

But in Dana Point he turned north, onto the Coast Highway. He wanted to ride within sight of the sea, and this was the best way. A moment of sharp mortal fear as he glanced down into the small boat harbor at Dana Point; something in the shape of it scared him. He fought it away, pushed harder up and down the roller coaster ride of the road, enjoying the pain. Eyes burning from sweat, thighs going wooden on him, his lungs heaved just as if he were sobbing, violently but rhythmically. Maybe this was the only way he could let himself sob so hard, and all without a tear, except those blown out by the harsh rush of salt wind scouring his face. Another moment of sharp fear as he passed the industrial complex at Muddy Canyon, like a vacuum in his heart, tugging everything inward. Harder, go harder, leave all that behind. Go harder, see what breaks first. Image of Ramona walking up the streamside path. That broke her heart.

On a whim he turned into Newport, onto Balboa Peninsula. It was a long sprint to the dead end at the Wedge, and he flew, final effort, killing himself on a bike. He came to the end of the road, slewed with braking, freed a cramping foot, put it down. The harbor channel, between its two stone jetties. Green scraps flying at the top of tall palm trees.

He freed the other foot, walked the bike to the concrete wall at the jetty’s foot. His thighs felt ten feet around, he could barely walk. He was still gasping for air, and with the bike wind gone sweat poured out of him, ran down his burning face. All his muscles pulsed, bump bump bump with every hard knock of his heart. The whole world shifted and jumped with every heartbeat, bump bump bump, and things in the late afternoon sun had a luminous grainy quality, as if bursting with the internal pressure of their own colors. Ah yes: the end of a workout. Faint wash of nausea, fought, mastered, passed through, to something like sexual afterglow, only more total, more spread through the musculature—more in muscles than in nerves, some sort of beta-endorphin opiate high, the workout high, best of them all. Sure, he felt pretty good for a man in the first great multiple grief of his life. Except he was cooking. The afternoon sea breeze helped, but not enough. He trod through the sand, every step sinking deep, calves almost cramping.

He stripped to his shorts, walked out into the ocean. Water perfect, just over seventy degrees and clear as glass. He dove in, delicious coolness all over him. He swam around dragging his legs, which pulsed furiously. Lolled back into the shallows and leaped off the bottom to ride the little tubes until they dumped him on the sand. Could even catch a miniature Wedge effect, side wave backwashing across the incoming ones for an extra push. He had done this as a child, with Tom, an old man even then, doing the same beside him. Old bald man yelling, “Outside! Outside!” Green flags ripping above the lifeguard stands, the big stones of the jetty. They had done a lot together, Tom and he. Coronado to Lassen, Yuma to Eureka, there was no escaping that.

Cooled off and tired, Kevin sat on the wet sand just above the reach of the white soup. The salt wind dried him and he could feel the rime of it on his skin and in his hair, warping lick into tangles of curl. Late afternoon sun glassed the water. Salty light in the salty wind. Sand.

He put on his shirt and left it unbuttoned, dropped his shoes by his bike and walked out the jetty, feeling each warm stone with his toes. They had walked out here many times, he used to scare Tom with his leaps. He tried one, hurt his arch. Only kids could do it. His moods rushed up and down on a wild tide of their own, hitting new ebb records, then curious floods of euphoria. How he had loved his grandpa, what friends they had been. It was only by feeling that love that he could do justice to what had happened since. So he had to feel this good, and this bad. He stepped over a big gap between stones, landed perfectly. It was coming back, the art of it. You had to dance over them, keep committing yourself to something more than a normal step. Like life: like that, and that, and that.

The sun was obscured by a cloud for a moment, then burst out again. Big clouds like tall ships coasted in, setting sail for the mountains and the desert beyond. The ocean was a deep, rich, blue blue, a blue in blue within blue inside of blue, the heart and soul and center of blue. Blinding chips of sunlight bounced on the swelltops. Liquid white light glazed the apricot cliff of Corona del Mar, the needles of its Torrey pines like sprays of dark green. Ironwood color of the sun-drenched cliff. Eye still jumping a bit here, oxygen starvation, then enrichment. What a glossy surface to the massive rocky substance of the world! These boulders under his feet were amazing pieces of work, so big and stony, like the broken marbles of giants.

He skipped from boulder to boulder, looking. From time to time his hands came together and swung the imaginary bat in its catlike involuntary swing.

He came to the end of the jetty, the shoulder-high lighthouse block. The wind rushed over him and the clouds sailed in, the waves made their myriad glugs and the sunlight packed everything, and he stood there balancing, feeling he had come to the right place, and was now wide awake, at the center of things. End of the world. Sun low on the water.

For a long time he stood there, turning round, staring at all of it, trying to take it all in. All the events of the summer filled him at once, flooding him from a deep well of physical sensation, spinning him in a slurry of joy and sorrow. There was a steel chisel someone had left behind. He kneeled, picked it up and banged it against the last granite rock of the jetty. The rock resisted, harder than he would have imagined. Stubborn stuff, this world. A chunk of rock about the size of two softballs was wedged between boulders, and he freed it for use as a hammer. Hammer and chisel, he could write something, leave his mark on the world. All of a sudden he wanted to cut something deep and permanent, something like I, Kevin Claiborne, was here in October of 2065 with oceans of clouds in the sky and in me, and I am bursting with them and everything has gone wrong! The granite being what it was, he contented himself with KC. He cut the figures as deep as he could.

When he was done he put down his tools. Behind him Orange County pulsed green and amber, jumping with his heart, glossy, intense, vibrant, awake, alive. His world and the wind pouring through it. His hands came together and made their half swing. If only Hank hadn’t caught that last one. If only Ramona, if only Tom, if only the world, all in him all at once, with the sharp stab of our unavoidable grief; and it seemed to him then that he was without a doubt the unhappiest person in the whole world.

And at that thought (thinking about it) he began to laugh.