Birthday Party

A neighboring table was set for a party of ten with an enormous Victorian epergne almost hidden under tropical flowers and orchids in an arrangement of red, yellow and black while one of the eternally cheerful cherubs of the epergne held a small dowel with a banner attached reading ‘Happy Birthday Wolfgang’ in English and German jammed into its tiny bronze hand. A sad looking woman of about thirty, over-dressed in a white evening gown, was sitting alone at the table with her back to a spectacular equatorial sunset.

As I had approached our table in the early evening light of the rapidly sinking sun, I thought the dress might have been cream colored but Elena informed me it was from last season and pointed out faintly marked sweat stains under the woman’s arms.

“How do you know the sweat stains aren’t this season’s; or maybe they are just some sort of fashion detailing? And how could you possibly know what the current fashion was here last season?”

Elena never misses a chance to point out my ignorance of such things in the kindest possible way, “If you ever paid attention to what I wear, you would know that I have a gown exactly like that minus the sweat stains. I wore it to the Black and White last year.”

“You did? Hmm … the only thing I remember from that event was that you wore Kelly green shoes, for which by the way, I would like to thank you. Those shoes helped me find you in the crowd all evening.”

“I thought you said you liked them because they matched my eyes?”

“That too.” I paused and looked back at the woman at the next table, “I sure hope Wolfgang brings a crowd with him. I am not sure I can bear to watch a scene like that all through dinner.”

“Just watch the sunset and think about that trickle of sweat running down your jaw.”

“That isn’t sweat. It’s water. I used a little too much combing my hair a moment ago. You know what? The men’s room here has wallpaper!”

“You combed your hair?”

A waiter came to take our drink order and Elena asked for an extra dry white wine from California. I ordered something I invented in the moment, confusing the waiter briefly, but he recovered his poise and simply wrote down the combination.

The woman at the next table was leaning on one hand and studying a couple of pages in a small booklet, turning the page and then flipping back to the previous page. Her head came up quickly at one moment to watch a waiter walk by asking if madam wanted anything. She said something I couldn’t hear after looking at her wristwatch and the waiter departed, returning a few minutes later with a large glass filled with something alcoholic looking and littered with tropical fruit, two straws and an oversized pink drink umbrella.

Elena brought my attention to a motor-sailboat heading in toward one of the piers from the direction of the sunset. I hadn’t even noticed the sails until the moment the waiter set the drink down. But there it was, large and impressive, a motor-sailer with blue sails, now being furled, and a white hull. The waiter said something to the woman in white and pointed in the direction of the boat.

The woman’s careful blond highlights flipped over her shoulder as she turned her head quickly to see. Standing, she placed the booklet in her handbag, rearranged her table setting, carefully making it match the others, then saying something in a low voice to the waiter, to which he inclined his head, she took a breath and grew a very broad smile. Pushing her hair behind an ear with one hand she walked quickly out a seaside entry of the restaurant and almost skipped down to the pier where the boat was being moored.

While the crew was busy with mooring lines a crowd of men and women were rising from the boat’s interior cabins and carefully making their way along the main deck toward the gangway. The men were wearing white tuxedo jackets and black pants, while the women seemed to be clothed in the tropic light itself, jewels and sequins flashing and glittering in the red and gold light of the sunset.

“Looks like an animated jewel box,” I murmured louder than I intended.

“It is an animated jewel box,” Elena’s hand touched my arm, “I wonder which one is Wolfgang?”

The waiter had just then appeared with our drinks and heard her question, “Mr. Wolfgang is a guest here in the bungalows, madam. Your drinks; a very dry white wine for the lady and for the gentleman … the gentleman’s … cocktail.” He looked doubtfully at the drink as though it might not be the right thing, and then asked, “Please sir, would you try the cocktail and tell me if it is correct?”

I took a slug and making a face said, “Yep. That’s the ticket!”

Looking relieved, he nodded his head smiling and said he would be returning momentarily for our dinner order. I looked at him with a deadpan face and said, “Oh, we won’t be having anything to eat, we’re just going to get drunk and spill our drinks on the other guests.” His startled face actually brought an uncharacteristically sympathetic response from Elena who quickly interjected, “Don’t listen to him. We are having dinner and he’s just joking.” Relief again flooded the waiter’s face and he laughed saying, “Ha ha ha … The gentleman is being funny ... ha ha ha! I will be right back.” Then he scurried away, almost running.

Then she added to me, “Please pick on someone who can’t put ipecac in our food. If my dinner comes out strange because of you, you can dance by yourself.”

“You couldn’t let me dance by myself. What would people think?”

“They’d think you were dancing with an invisible partner. They’d also think you are a little touched, and they would be correct. How’s that drink?”

“I think I’m getting a little touched.”

“It serves you right for teasing the waiter and ordering … well, whatever that drink is.”

“Do you think I could get a copyright on this recipe?”

“Tell me again what’s in it?”

“I can’t remember.”

“Then, no.”

“Sadly, he said, I should have written it down.”

“Pity, she said, he never learned to write.”

One by one the party from the boat was finally making its way down the gangway and toward the woman in white waiting on the pier. Many of the men waved to her as they walked down the brow and took her hand as they stepped onto the pier, occasionally kissing her on the cheek while the women gave her slight embraces and a cursory air-kiss on one cheek. When the last man stepped onto the pier a brief conversation took place and the woman indicated the restaurant with a wave of her hand and the party began to move up the pier toward the seaside entrance.

Elena made the observation that from where ever they had sailed, all the guests must have dressed on the boat because their freshly groomed appearance couldn’t have been achieved otherwise. “Can you imagine me sailing in a dress like one of those for an entire afternoon in this humidity?”

“I can’t imagine you sailing at all. The thought of a mast protruding from your oh so lovely cleavage, with or without a dress, is too much of a stretch for even my twisted imagination. And where would the passengers sleep?”

“Have you thought of going into advertising?” she asked sweetly.

“We should advertise for Wolfgang. I think this shebang is for him, and that banner says “Happy Birthday Wolfgang” and it says it in two languages and that big fancy chair is just sitting there empty. I don’t know, but it just seems to me that when you throw a birthday party for someone with all this hoorah, they ought to be there to make fun of it!”

“Maybe Wolfgang doesn’t like hoorah.”

Elena is mostly, but not always, right.

All the guests had arrived. The seating seemed to be quite a problem because someone wanted to sit somewhere other than next to Wolfgang’s chair and a quiet girl of about 14 must have been an unannounced arrival and a place setting had to be added even though there were more than enough chairs which threw the woman in the white dress into a small panic. A moment or two of eavesdropping convinced me no one at all wanted to sit next to Wolfgang and that caused me to wonder aloud to Elena if perhaps he was flatulent.

“Well, it has me wondering too. But I was wondering if the fellow throws food?”

Elena wasn’t far wrong.

Our waiter returned and asking what we would like for dinner smiled when we ordered an entire kitchen full of food. Elena has a good appetite and my eating habits frequently are compared to that of large omnivorous beasts.

“Would the lady and the gentleman care for our special appetizer this evening?”

“And what would that special appetizer be this evening?” Why is it that when Elena asks those questions she makes it sound like she’s talking about herself?

The waiter stuttered a little under her green gaze, recovered and responded with, “Madam would truly enjoy our appetizer this evening. We are offering a thinly sliced crostini with bitter endive and …”, he lowered his voice, “Beluga caviar.”

Elena’s perfectly straight white teeth flashed a devastating grin and absolutely awash with enthusiasm she took the waiter’s hand saying in an alto voice, “Madam would be delighted if you, yourself served it up.”

The waiter blushed and his slightly tanned Asiatic coloring turned vaguely purple. “It is my pleasure!”

“How do you do that? I am sure you were talking about food and I think you gave him an erection.”

“Did I? I hope so. It builds my self-confidence.”

“I wasn’t aware that you lacked self-confidence. Are you sure you aren’t building self-aggrandizement? You are the only woman I know who can make trained monkeys forget their acts.”

“You are the only trained monkey I’ve ever spoken to … perhaps in my entire life,” she said in an aggrieved tone.

The birthday table had settled into a series of conversations mostly relating to the circumstances of the boat trip. The young girl who showed up unexpectedly, simply sat and occasionally laughed at other guest’s comments. Elena told me quietly she was literally dying to find out who the young lady might be and was absolutely certain her presence was going to cause some drama. Elena is always correct about such things, well, almost always, and that perception was pitch perfect in this situation.

Our caviar-laden crostini laying on its mattress of bitter endive made its entrance and bowed its final exit with not a crumb left behind to the extreme delight of our waiter. Before the caviar’s appearance he had asked if we wanted a different wine with our appetizer, and when Elena had quickly told him we each wanted a shot of vodka instead, his smile stretched halfway to his ears and when she named an obscure but extremely expensive brand, his molars were finally seeing his own earlobes. “Yes, madam. We keep that brand for special occasions, but confidentially, the chef sometimes uses it for a better flambé effect on some dishes.” He looked doubtful when he asked if we wanted it on ice, but Elena’s horrified look told him everything he wanted to know and this time, the smile’s stretch had almost pulled his nasal lobes into his sideburns. “Very good, madam, very good. I will be back in a moment.”

“Yew shore know how ta git ‘em movin’ señorita!”

“Why, darlin’ it’s mah specialty!” Elena has a way with anything with external sex organs. Truthfully, she also has a way of engaging her own sex without intimidating them with her startling film star looks. Our neighboring table kept sending surreptitious looks in our direction, well, truthfully in Elena’s direction, and I knew she was enjoying the attention, so when I mentioned to her that they were probably just wondering if they could get the special appetizer, she snorted an unladylike sound resembling a leaking balloon and almost guffawed. I enjoy making Elena laugh because I know it’s sincere. When she is truly amused she has a loud bray like Tallulah Bankhead.

The neighboring table had relaxed into a gentle buzz of conversation although no food had arrived for them and Elena and I were halfway through a salad of lettuce young enough that eating it might be considered infanticide and it was garnished in julienne vegetables and a lemon vinaigrette so sparse it almost forgot to show up, rather like Wolfgang. But Elena’s enthusiasm for the food had prompted an invitation into the kitchen to advise the chef, then asked to give service instruction to the wait staff and even requested to be the godmother of all the first-born children in the district. After all that, Wolfgang still hadn’t arrived.

The fancy chair for the birthday boy, resembling a baroque throne, sat empty, expectant, with the chairs on either side empty as well. It seems no one wanted to sit next to Wolfgang, and that worked out very well as Wolfgang wasn’t there to sit next to. The woman in white presided pleasantly, if a little formally. She didn’t seem to be experiencing any extraordinary anxiety. The centerpiece with its inapt presence and flag-bearing cherub kept cross-table guests busy stretching their necks to address someone opposite. The birthday banner fluttered in the light breeze from the sea assuring the guests that it was indeed still Wolfgang’s birthday whether they spoke German or English and whether or not he ever showed up.

I suddenly realized that none of the guests had had even an appetizer, although many of them had had a cocktail or two. Elena brought it to my attention that there had been some small rows about whether ordering cocktails would be inappropriate.

“Really?” I asked.

“Oh yes. In fact, it was the lady in white who told them why not, she had one.”

“She certainly did! That pink umbrella thing. But I’ll bet it wasn’t as good as our vodka.”

“Probably not. Do you suppose there’s a vodka drink that comes with one of those umbrellas?”

“Certainly not! Vodka drinks come with fur hats!”

“And fur tongues if you drink enough of them!”

There was no way I could top that.

The sun had dropped well over the horizon and the deep black night of the tropics had enveloped the bright lights of the restaurant. Tinny German music from the Weimar Republic and 1930’s Berlin had been playing over the in-house music system thinly since our arrival, meanwhile blue lights for the purpose, occasionally snapped with the electrocution deaths of flying insects. The restaurant had filled and emptied and filled again and mostly emptied of its first and second seatings and still Wolfgang hadn’t made his appearance. Maybe he didn’t like birthdays but Wolfgang certainly wasn’t demonstrating Germanic timeliness.

Elena and I had stretched our stay across two seatings and grazed our way through a vast set of courses while our neighboring table watched the arrival of every one like starving pets. A different glass of wine accompanied each course and our waiter had the look of a man who had found the treasure of the Templars. The woman in white though, barely seemed to know we were there. Her initial poise was beginning to wear thin and every so often her eyes drifted toward the bungalows facing the beach, a strange look of fear invading them as they glanced in that direction, and seeing nothing, a flicker of relief like breath came back into her entire body.

The quiet girl suddenly speaking loudly, announced that she was going to order and a silence fell over the table. She didn’t care, she was hungry and he was rude. He had kept everyone waiting for hours and those people, she indicated Elena and I, had finished their entire dinner (not quite true) while the birthday party was still waiting.

The Maitre’d hurried over and began speaking in a low voice in the young lady’s ear, but she pulled away saying she didn’t care; she wanted to order now. The Maitre’d shrugged his shoulders but something caught his attention and he looked toward the bungalows where his stare caught a movement and everyone at the table followed his glance.

Against a background of incandescent lights from one of the nearer bungalows and its reflection off the wings of hundreds of flying insects the silhouette of a large man could be seen walking through the tropic blackness toward the restaurant.

“Now we get to see who all the fuss is over,” Elena said matter-of-factly.

At another table one of the other guests overheard her and said, “he sure likes to be fashionably late. Very fashionably late!”

And fashionably inappropriate, I thought.

Wolfgang entered the restaurant with a deliberate slowness. There were two or three steps up from the grass leading to the bungalows and his steps seemed designed to bring more and more of his being into view. His entrance was cinematic.

The woman in white stood as he reached the top step and some of the others automatically responded by also rising, which brought the remainder to their feet except the young girl, who crossed her arms and refused to even look in his direction.

Oddly, a few other tables also rose and applauded his entrance. I am not sure whether they knew him or were applauding his incredible entrance or were relieved that the guests at his table could finally eat. I would have bet on the entrance.

Wolfgang stood about two meters tall from his strangely sandaled feet to the crown of his head covered with long, rather shaggy blond hair. It was clear from the carefully managed display of his muscular figure he worked obsessively on body-building and physical fitness. He was wearing a loose white shirt unbuttoned to his navel revealing a tautly muscled chest and abdomen with the barest hint of a tan. He had carefully rolled his sleeves up about halfway to show off his lower arm development. His shirt barely covered a pair of brief style bathing trunks revealing massive, carefully shaved leg muscles. Most disturbing was a set of deeply carved creases, like a sargent’s chevrons, running upward at an angle from the bridge of his nose parallel with his eyebrows, giving him a perpetually angry expression, like an unfortunate Klingon.

In his passage across the restaurant floor he was forced to pass on one side or the other of our table and it seemed to annoy him but he kept his focus. His path took him behind me forcing him to look at the people impeding his progress. I’m guessing it was Elena’s brilliant auburn hair that caught his eye because he stopped briefly and stared. It wasn’t a stare of recognition of beauty but seemed to be more a look of competition, as if something in the room was drawing attention away from him and he did not take it well. As he stopped behind me, a whiff of expensive cologne stopped with him.

The guests at his table were silent; in fact, the entire restaurant was silent except for the tinny sound of 1930’s Berlin cabaret music floating with insects in the air.

When he reached his chair, one of the restaurant staff pulled it away from the table for him. I thought everyone would wait to sit until he had seated himself but it wasn’t that formal. For nearly a full minute he ignored everything but the epergne and its decorations, finally nodding his head in satisfaction. Wolfgang didn’t seem to notice or care that the chairs on either side of him were empty and while he had a brief greeting for most he very pointedly ignored the girl with her arms crossed and asked if everyone was ready for dessert.

The girl blurted out that they hadn’t even had dinner and that he had kept everyone waiting for over an hour to which Wolfgang merely looked at her until she leaped out of her chair knocking it over backward and ran from the restaurant. Laughing heartily, Wolfgang said in his heavily accented English, “Who invited her anyway? Ha ha ha!”

The restaurant staff must have been forewarned because one of the staff merely righted the downed chair. Wolfgang announced that everyone would be having his birthday dessert and, nodding, the staff member retreated to the kitchen. A low murmur of conversation enveloped the table and I watched the woman in white shrink into herself. Words floated toward our table about business and the accommodations and the boat trip but it was clear, Wolfgang was rather like a lion that had arrived at a fiesta for gazelle and the gazelle were very nervous.

A noticeable tension descended and the air in the restaurant seemed to be thickening around that rather tinny music and Elena noticed it as well.

“Why does that music sound so … saccharine now? It didn’t sound like that before, did it?”

“Let’s see if we can’t get them to find an alternative.”

Signaling our waiter, who almost ran to our table, I asked him if he could please change the music to something more contemporary. He looked a little doubtful, but nodded and gave a thousand watt or so smile moving off in the direction of the kitchen. Moments later he and the Maitre’d appeared together in the kitchen doorway with doubt in the Maitre’d’s eyes. The waiter seemed to be reassuring the Maitre’d it was those people who had ordered the special appetizer making the request and even pointed in our direction. They returned to the kitchen and a few moments later the music changed to Elvis Costello followed by some contemporary American Jazz.

I was expecting an argument from Wolfgang but while Wolfgang’s face underwent a brief loss of color, whatever equanimity he possessed returned and no comment was made although the other guests at his table seemed to be holding their breath until he started to speak again.

Elena and I had ordered a rather fantastic dessert, naturally with its accompanying wine, and when our waiter with his now perpetual smile arrived, Wolfgang seemed to be giving his complete attention to the cherub holding the banner, but his guests watched the progress of our dessert across the restaurant floor. The deep creases on his forehead seemed to grow deeper when he saw his guests’ attention was elsewhere. When he turned to see what they were watching, a russet color invaded his face and seeing it, a young man touched his partner on the arm and she in turn touched the man to her right and the touching went around the table like a little ballet until everyone had their attention focused back on the birthday boy.

Moments later, a birthday cake arrived at the table and Wolfgang’s face was wreathed in smiles as he explained what was in the cake and how important it was to eat a healthy diet. The waiters for the table began cutting and serving the cake. I believed the guests were hungry enough to consume Wolfgang himself whom, judging from the pained expressions his guests had after they started to taste the cake, they probably would have preferred.

Elena and I concentrated on our tropic fantasy dessert and toasted each other with its accompanying wine while Wolfgang loudly exclaimed how grand the cake was; I don’t think his guests concurred. One woman arose and left in the direction of a restroom and a waiter began to lift her plate with its remainder of cake to which Wolfgang said, “Leave it. She’ll want more.”

Lingering through our wine, Elena leaned over and said in a conspiratorial whisper, “Let’s have espresso!”

“Deal.” I whispered back.

Elena told the waiter we were not in a hurry and he replied, “Yes, madam. No rush, madam.”

At the next table the entire cake was being consumed. The guests looked vaguely nauseous and Wolfgang looked triumphant, but one guest must have marred poor Wolfgang’s evening because he wouldn’t accept the last piece, and in spite of his gusto for whatever kind of cake it was, Wolfgang wasn’t having any more either and a rather quiet row ensued growing louder until Wolfgang, leaning toward the guest and extending his powerful arm flicked the plate with its contents onto the floor.

A waiter hurried over and without much apology in his voice, Wolfgang said, “I am sorry. A mess for you to clean up.”

“This is the part of the movie where I always eat lots of popcorn,” Elena said.

“This is the part of the movie where I always go to the restroom,” I replied, “You were right. He throws food.”

“Don’t let it bother you. Think of it as all part of a grand experience.” She was all smiles.

“I’ve been around food throwers before. They just raise my dry cleaning bill. Why can’t we just enjoy the insects and the humidity?”

“This is better than incest and humility,” she malapropped, “I can’t wait to see who wins!”

Fortunately, our espresso arrived with a national debt sized bill and a smile from the waiter wide enough to cause ivory poaching. It was great espresso and I asked the waiter how it happened that such good espresso occurred south of the equator. What I didn’t notice was that Wolfgang’s table had grown completely silent, they may have been praying for all I know, but Wolfgang must have overheard my question.

After the waiter finished explaining that they received training from an Italian barista and left with my watch, ring, wallet and bankbook, Wolfgang sat forward in his chair leaning on its arm and turned to face our table wiping the corners of his mouth rather delicately with his napkin then said a little louder than necessary, “You know, coffee is bad for the complexion because it affects the liver function. You mustn’t drink coffee. American coffee is high in caffeine and that is ruinous for blood pressure and the heart. With dairy products included it is also bad for the veins and the arteries.” He continued on in this manner for a few minutes and then having finished his lecture, turned back to his guests and said, “I am always the spreader of truth. It is necessary for me because it is who I am.”

“What about popcorn?” Elena quipped loudly.

Wolfgang simply ignored her, but it seems he and I were destined to come into brief contact again. He left his party as Elena and I were getting ready to leave the restaurant and as he walked by our table I just couldn’t help myself saying, “Happy Birthday, Wolfgang,” and restraining myself from throwing a sieg heil instead stuck out my hand for him to shake.

He paused momentarily, looking down at my outstretched hand but instead of shaking it, brushed the back of his hand against the back of mine and then continued out of the restaurant. Elena hadn’t noticed because she was gathering her handbag, but when I told her she giggled and said, “Well, now I am sure of one thing. Wolfgang is very kinky!”

Night Owl

Photo: Diego Fernandes 2007


Like a large school of fish, a crowd of people is leaving a southern California movie theater. The lights from the lobby behind them turn the crowd into a bobbing, waving mass of silhouettes, each indistinguishable from the other. As the throng of people reaches the sidewalk, it breaks into smaller groups, couples and singles. The cake batter bowl pouring its final drops into a baking tin. A final drop remains poised on the edge of the bowl. A young man deciding on the direction he wishes to take from the theater.

It is the weekend but tomorrow he has promised work to one superior or another. He has no thought of trying to avoid the work, neither has he the desire to return home immediately. The film was very good and has left him with a pleasant excitement which could be nicely capped by a short stroll to the 24 hour restaurant up the street and thirty minutes or so just sipping the rest of the day away with a cup of hot coffee; no harm, the bus wouldn’t be available for another forty minutes anyway. The decision made, his easy stride takes him to the coffee and a window booth in five minutes. He smiles as he remembers his way through the film. After a third cup of coffee his mind suddenly jumps to the present and his eyes find the hands on a wall clock indicating the passage of forty minutes. Almost violently, he throws money on the table for the coffee and tip. Pushing his way through the two sets of glass doors to the street, he notices the way his reflection on the doors tries to escape back into the restaurant. On the street again his dismay mounts when the taillights of the bus pull away from the stop across from the theater. His sudden anger at himself propels his body into three running steps then pulls him to an abrupt halt. His stormy countenance changes to a grin. There’s nothing he can do about that bus now; perhaps there’s a later one. Feeling once more in control, he strolls to the bus stop and reads the schedule for that evening; the last bus of the night is another forty minute wait. He returns to the restaurant.

A smile and an explanation to the sympathetic waitress regains him his former seat at the window and a new but free cup that apparently refills itself magically as the young man returns to his reverie. A buttered cinnamon roll joins the coffee. Thirty-nine minutes later, the young man again bounces money on the table and runs for the doors. He waves to the pretty waitress as he departs. As he pushes through the final set of doors the bus passes in front of the restaurant toward the stop in front of the theater. With an incredible burst of speed the young man follows the bus up the street, knowing he can make it in time. He must make it in time.

The bus does not stop. Even pounding on the bus doors, a shout and an extra burst of speed do nothing to slow its progress. Inside the bus, the driver hears the shout to stop but smiles to himself and says to a young lady in the front seat, next time that guy will be at the bus stop on time. The young lady simpers; the driver is her new boyfriend and she is very fond of him.

Angry with himself and the bus driver, the young man throws himself on the curb and sits cross-legged with elbows on knees and hands supporting chin. The green light from a streetlamp gives him the appearance of a brooding beast. The young man’s anger does not last long; he is not given to worrying over things he cannot change. He is young and he is rather naïve, but he is not unintelligent and as his temper abates he takes stock of his situation. His pockets reveal that a taxi is out of the question. He must walk, or hitchhike. He has never in his life had to hitchhike or felt the inclination to do so. The walk has been made before, but during the day and a warm day at that. The evening is cool and a faint mist is beginning to show itself in bright halos gathering about streetlights. He does not like the idea of hitchhiking. In his mind it feels the same as begging or panhandling. The decision is made to walk. His goal is seven miles away.

Two and half miles of walking in the chilling air and thickening mist convince the young man that perhaps hitching a ride might not be so bad. Five minutes of riding in a heated automobile would not be seriously indebting himself to anyone. It is now two-thirty in the morning a bank sign informs him. Two-thirty; fifty degrees; zero six percent. Six percent?

There are very few cars on the road. Ten or twelve pass him, headlights appearing out of the mist suddenly, some even veer wide to avoid him. A few more autos go by and then a city policeman slows and pulls to the curb in the inverted white cone of a streetlamp. Just my luck, the young man thinks, now I’ll be arrested for hitchhiking. The policeman is very friendly when the young man tells him of the situation. Quite a predicament agrees the officer. I don’t suppose you could or would give me a ride, the young man asks hopefully. The patrolman shakes his head, we aren’t allowed to give rides … your best bet would be to keep your thumb out, sorry. Have a nice evening. Pulling away from the sidewalk and the streetlight, the red taillights of the patrol car fade in the ever thickening, swirling mist.

Well, the young man smiles, at least he didn’t arrest me. More cars, he thought, more cars.

Another mile. Another mile. Two more miles to go. Where are the cars, this is a big city, where are the cars?

Under another streetlight he stops and waits for a moment. His breath is beginning to tear a raw spot in his throat with the effort and the cold air. Looking behind him two headlights float in the fog, an unblinking stare, a great bird of prey, pinpoints of light unattached to anything, pinpoints of light slowly growing into great beacons. The mist seems to rush toward their center then vanish. Even at fifty feet the car is still invisible, but it begins to coalesce around those warm beams of light, a white car, a large white car. The young man cannot identify the make of the automobile. A large white car has silently found him in the fog.

Inside the automobile the driver sees the pool of streetlight and a young man with his arm out and thumb up. He gives a short laugh and to himself thinks how strange the fog makes everything appear. The young man wouldn’t have been visible if not for the glaring white of his t-shirt and the headlights reflecting off his arm. He must be cold. T-shirt, corduroy pants, deck shoes, he must be cold. The driver pulls to a stop beside the young man. A nice looking young man he thinks, a nice looking young man.

Pulling up beside the young man, the white car glides to a silent stop. The young man hesitates. His mind races; someone finally stopped; I’m only a couple of miles from home; my first successful hitchhike; why did this guy stop? No one else did. I am so cold; if I accept the ride, will he ask for gas money; what if he’s turning at the next street? The window hums as it slides downward a couple of inches into the car door. The young man can see his reflection in the glass from the streetlight.

Do you want a ride? Where are you headed? An anonymous voice asks.

Don’t hesitate, just tell the man where you want to go and he’ll tell you if he’s going that way. Yes, I’m going to Seventh Street, is that a long way out of your way?

Get in. No problem.

Get in, the driver said, no problem. He said get in, no problem. It must not be out of his way. The young man opens the door and almost jumps into the car. Thank you, thank you, thank you, the young man overflows thankfulness.

You’re welcome, you’re welcome, you’re welcome, the driver laughs at the young man’s enthusiastic thanks.

It is really cold out there, especially since I forgot to bring a sweater or something, I really appreciate this. The young man pulls the door shut as he seats himself. The car’s heater must have been turned on full because the young man feels his feet warm almost at once, then as he rubs warmth into his arms all his senses become alert. The softness of the car seat, is it velvet? It is like a very soft easy chair. He smells a heavy musky masculine kind of what? Perfume, cologne? And underneath the musk, an odor of, was it sweat? At the moment the young man, though he could not say why, thought of the pretty waitress at the restaurant where he’d had coffee. Coffee sitting so bitterly now on his taste buds.

The young man becomes aware of two other senses almost simultaneously. In his ears, a kind of dull thump or click, and his eyes see in the yellow light from the massive dashboard, the driver.

The driver is a big man. A very big man. A man with arms borrowed from Hercules or Atlas. The driver is wearing a kind of t-shirt with a collar and buttons. A ribbed t-shirt. In the strange light it looks dark blue. A t-shirt with a collar. The driver has very pale colored hair, is it blond or white or platinum? The young man can’t tell. The big man’s face is outlined, his profile outlined in yellow light from the dash. But the young man can’t concentrate on it, just a face in darkness, a normal face on a very big man.

The young man cannot concentrate because the driver wears no trousers, no shorts, nothing. He just sits quietly behind the wheel of his large automobile, his huge muscular thighs spread comfortably apart on the bench seat, his dark blue t-shirt with a collar and buttons straining its seams over his well-developed pectorals, with nothing else on. The young man feels like he has been punched in the stomach. The young man is almost hypnotized by the size of the driver’s erect organ; is hypnotized.It sprouts like a ship’s mast, a skyscraper from the driver’s groin, a groin furred with hair that looks red in the odd light, each testicle is the size of a chicken’s egg. The young man can see, stares at, the driver’s genitals; an enormous organ and testicles like a bull’s, because the driver has no pants on. The young man tries to imagine, to will pants onto the driver but the driver has no pants on, the driver …

Do you like it? The driver says calmly as he pulls away from the curb.

What was that sound, says the young man, what was that sound I heard? The young man feels himself shaking, trembling, fighting for air. What was that sound, the young man repeats.

It’s okay. I just locked the doors, it’s electric. I locked the doors here from my master switch, says the driver, here, do you see? He must have been pointing at his master switch, but the young man is looking at his own door for the lock and the door latch handle.

I don’t think this is a good idea says the young man. I think I better get out here; would you let me out here please. At the next light is fine. I’d like to get out at the next light. Could you let me out at the next light? Thank you for the ride.

Do you like it? I think you probably like it, says the driver. Why don’t I pull over where we can relax, you know, and you can feel it, touch it. Touch it all you want. You a very nice looking young man. Would you like to touch it?

No, he doesn’t really want me to touch it. He doesn’t really. This is not really happening, this man has no pants on and people always wear pants when they drive cars. You can’t get out of your car if you have no pants on. Where are his pants? No, I don’t want to touch … I don’t want to touch it; I would like to get out at the next light please?

The big man, the driver, sounds angry, don’t play innocent, you like my cock, you want to touch it.

Please, sir. Mother always said to say sir. To say yes sir, no sir. Yes ma’am, no ma’am. I am not trying to play innocent; I just want to get out here at this light, if you will please open the door. I can’t find the door handle. How do I open the door? Please sir, please open the door. The young man can feel himself losing his air. The car is very hot. He can smell the driver’s desire. He can see the driver’s desire. The driver has no pants on.

The young man takes a deep breath as the big man turns away from the main road. I have to go that way sir, I have to work tomorrow. Please.

The young man finds the door handle and pulls but the door will not open. The door will not open. The driver chuckles. A friendly chuckle, I have to unlock it from the master switch. The big man sounds very kind. I like you, young man. I think you look very nice. I want you to like me, am I so bad? Look at me, am I so bad? The young man could not look at him. Come on, says the driver, very softly, look at me, I’m not so bad. The driver watches the road casually while a heavy right arm moves gently across the space between them and a massive hand locks around the young man’s chin. The driver turns, forces, the young man’s head slowly toward himself. You see, I’m not so bad.

The young man tries to pull the driver’s hand from his chin, but the driver slowly tightens his thumb and fingers into the face, the jaw of the young man. The harder the young man pulls on the driver’s wrist the tighter the driver squeezes. The pain is terrible. The young man finally lets go; the driver still holds his head but stops squeezing his fingers into the young man’s cheeks. See, I’m not so bad, am I?

Somewhere along the road the lights on the street stop being there. There are no more streetlights. It is dark except for the headlights and the yellow light coming from the dashboard. The driver turns the big white car to the side of the road and then turns into a circle of trees. The driver must have known the place.

When the car makes its final stop, the driver lets go of the young man’s face. I want to be nice to you he says. I want to make love to you.

Why, says the young man, why do you want to do this to me, I just wanted a ride. I just wanted a ride. The young man feels tears running down his cheeks and wipes them quickly off. Mother said men don’t cry. The driver is watching him cry in the yellow light of the instrument panel. The big man is watching him cry. Men don’t cry.

The driver pulls the young man toward him maybe to hug him, but the young man beats at the huge arms and says don’t touch me, don’t touch me, don’t touch me. Then the young man slides as far away from the big man as he can get. I don’t want to hurt you says the driver, I want to make love to you. I want you to like me, but I will hurt you if you make me. I will hurt you.

The young man is more frightened than before, more frightened than he has ever been in his life. Why do you want to do this to me? Why are you doing this to me? I just wanted a ride. I just wanted a ride because it was cold. I have to go to work tomorrow, please just let me out.

The big man just looks at him and says sadly, I don’t want to hurt you.

The young man takes a deep breath and says calmly, please let me out, I’ll walk home from here, please.

For a moment the driver just looks at him, then he slides his arm slowly across the back of the seat until his fingers are just brushing the young man’s cheek, then he slides his body a little closer, then he puts his hand against the young man’s ear. Then with his whole hand against the side of the other’s face, he gives a sudden push and the young man’s head hits the car window. I don’t want to hurt you he says. The young man’s nose is bleeding. The driver reaches over with his left hand and wipes the blood from under the young man’s nose. He does it very gently. Then he wipes the blood on his leg. I want to make love to you, not hurt you. The young man is silent.

The driver wipes more blood from the young man’s face and looks at it in the yellow light. Then he looks at the young man. This is your blood, he says. The big man slides his body just a little closer, I like you, I want to make love to you. He puts both of his huge hands on both sides of the young man’s head. The driver leans his head forward as if he is going to kiss the young man but when the young man says, you’re sick, he pulls his head back calmly as if he is thinking about it, then slaps the other very hard with his left hand, the one with blood on it. More blood comes out of the young man’s nose and splatters against the big man’s arm. The young man can see it in the dim light. Black spots on a big pale arm, like the man hadn’t been very careful when he was painting his house. But it isn’t paint, it is blood. The young man’s blood, and his right ear is ringing from the slap, he isn’t crying now, but tears have spurted from his eyes when the big man hit him.

Why are you doing this to me? Why? I just wanted a ride, I just wanted a ride. What is happening?

I saw you by the road and I thought you looked cold. The big man looks like he has tears in his eyes. Why is he crying? I think you are beautiful, I want to make love to you. Am I so bad? I don’t want to hurt you any more, but I will if you make me. I’ll take you where you want to go, but first I want to make love to you. I want you to take off your clothes so I can make love to you. If you don’t do what I want I will rip them off, and I will hurt you very badly.

The young man says something rude, but when the big man starts to move very quickly he screams wait, wait, I’m sorry, I’m sorry and in one motion pulls off his t-shirt. He holds out the shirt to the driver like it is a gift and says again I’m sorry, this time more calmly and then again, I’m sorry.

The big man puts his hands against the young man’s chest like it is something he has never seen before and makes a small sound in his throat. The young man is shaking so hard he nearly throws up. Please sir, I think I’m going to be sick he says trying hard to hold back the vomit.

The big man says then like a policeman or a doctor, you are not going to be sick. And it is almost like magic, the young man doesn’t throw up but he is still shaking and still very scared. Please don’t make me do this the young man says, please don’t make me do this. The big man smells the young man’s t-shirt like it is something holy. Both hands holding the shirt pressed against his face. How old are you, the driver says, you smell like a little boy, you smell like a beautiful little boy.

Please don’t make me do this. Let me go, I promise I won’t say anything to anyone, I promise. Please.

The driver knocks the young man’s head up against the window again but not as hard as the first time, and then he slaps him again but not as hard as the first time. I want to make love to you, not hurt you. Don’t make me hurt you again. Take off the rest. Take off everything. I want to see all of you. You are very beautiful. Take off the rest.

The young man starts to say please but very quietly, like a priest, the big man says every time you say please I will slap you. Do you understand? If you say please, it will be like you said please slap me. Then he says give me your hand and when the young man holds out his hand the big man takes it and puts it under his t-shirt against his chest. The young man can feel the massive muscles under the shirt move. Does that feel good, I have no hair on my chest, does it feel good? Then he slowly, slowly moves the young man’s hand down toward his groin. The young man tries to pull his arm back but the big man keeps a very strong hold on it and when he is just touching the course of hair that runs from the navel downward the young man pulls extra hard and says please … the big man just lets go of his arm and makes a small tsk-tsk sound, shakes his head and with his right hand pushes the young man’s head up against the window again, this time very hard.

The driver pulls his t-shirt over his head and gazes at the young man for a moment. He seems even bigger without his shirt. In the pale light he fills the car. Then he leans across the young man with his enormous body and holds him against the seat while he pulls the young man’s shoes off.

Wait, wait, the young man cries. What have I done, what have I done? He can feel the inside of his cheek has been cut by his own teeth. I just wanted a ride, a ride. The young man can taste blood in his mouth and feel tears on his face. The driver has unfastened his corduroy trousers and is jerking them down over his hips. Even though he is kicking his legs and trying to hit the driver with his pinned arms the other man is so strong it is like an adult with a small child. His underwear has come down with his pants and when the big man has them all the way off the young man urinates from fear. The driver does a strange thing; he wipes the urine on himself like it is cologne. Then with one arm holding the young man against the seat and another arm pinning his legs the driver lowers his head to the young man’s sex. The young man is so frightened he is seeing bright sparks behind his eyelids and can feel his heart pushing against the driver’s arm. The big man’s mouth is sliding on him and saliva is running down between his legs because there is so much of it.

The young man hears himself screaming as though from a great distance. Stop. Stop. Stop. Why are you doing this to me? Why are you doing this to me? I wanted a ride. I only wanted a ride. What is happening, what is happening to me? Oh God, I only want a ride. Stop. What is happening to me? Stop. Stop. Please stop. Please, please, please, stop …

He is seventeen and it is the young man’s first sexual experience.

Kalani

Photo: Diego Fernandes 2008

I can’t remember exactly where the place was, except someplace northwest of Pearl and Waianae and it was ‘locals only’. I couldn’t tell you anyway because I was laying down in the back of the station wagon on the way and I couldn’t see where the turn-offs were. If I had seen the road, I still couldn’t tell you because Kalani and his buds only let me go because I had enough money to rent three boards, and the spot was “the spot” and the break supposedly didn’t have a name. Well, it had a name to them, just not a name to the wide world, like the famous North Shore spots.

I actually ended up renting four boards for five guys, which was so typical of Kalani. He would say, “Oh no, there’s just gonna be you and me. Nobody else. I’ll have plenty of time to show you the ropes so you can get the place wired.” At first, I was naïve enough to believe him, but I got wise. If he said two, it meant at least four; if he said four, it meant ten and it didn’t matter if it was people or money or screws that fell on the floor.

I thought at first maybe he just consistently underestimated everything. I got wise to that too. Whenever I questioned his numbers he always answered, “Don’t worry ‘bout it, bud. Don’t worry ‘bout it. Too much worry’ll kill you. ‘Specially you haoles.”

That was another of his tactics. People were drawn to him because he abused them. I know that doesn’t make much sense but he would call you racist names to your face and you would take it as honesty or something. He said haoles made worry a science, whereas native Hawaiians were the soul of laidbackness. Nothing could bother a Hawaiian. Everything bothered anyone else, especially Mainlanders like myself. “You always wanna know how far, how much, how many…but you need to take it light, brah.” Kalani never talked any kind of pidgeon-surfer slang like that anywhere but near home. Everywhere else, his English was almost punctilious except for his use of ‘Bud’.

I remember talking to him once when he was home and drunk on Saporo beer and asking him about what it felt like to be a ‘real’ Hawaiian. I was reading a book about the overthrow of the last queen at the time and the whole concept had surprised me. The book had been written by, if not a Hawaiian nationalist, then at least a sympathizer and it revealed a different history than I was taught at school in California. Kalani muttering expletives under his breath about the haoles and the puka people, his word for Asians, because he said you could always find them in lines and they all looked alike, said, “fuckin’ haoles everywhere …” Then he made a slip, “even me! I got mostly haole in me, brah!” He giggled a little and then went back to swearing about pukas.

He didn’t look like a Hawaiian or a Polynesian at all. He had wavy dark chestnut colored hair and his eyes and eyebrows were the same color. He had beautiful teeth and a hesitant smile set in incredibly pale skin freckled with spots that were also the same color as his hair. It was actually kind of disturbing to look at him; the color looked dyed or fake because it was so even and there was so much of it. It wasn’t that he was bad looking or ugly or anything, cause he really wasn’t. He just looked kind of over-the-top dramatic. Intense would be the best description, really intense.

Kalani also had a thin, hairless and very short body, barely topping five feet and there was always sloppy casualness to the way he dressed. His hats always had odd bends in them and everything he wore had sat too long in a dryer with dozen of wrinkles running in odd directions. But he always wore leather shoes and they were always polished to a mirror finish. I tried to tease out the reason for those brightly polished shoes on a couple of occasions and he just shrugged me off.

Kalani claimed to be a Christian and spent a lot of time chatting up girls using religion as a line of attack. The rest of the time he spent trying to get them in the sack. He hung around regularly with one of four or five guys who he called his ‘buds’. All of those guys told excuse-like stories about why they were Kalani’s friend and they all complained about him whenever he wasn’t around, because he just seemed to absorb energy and resources. Oh yeah, he always had good ideas, but why did someone always have an accident or get in trouble?

One guy said while watching Kalani from a distance, “don’t go out with that fucker, you’ll end up in the hospital or the morgue. See this scar? That came from playing ‘follow-the-Kalani’”. I wanted to know what had happened and the guy, his name was Tyler, told me he had climbed on a highway bumper and fell off, tearing the skin off his leg.

“What? Did Kalani knock you off or something?”

“No,” he stated flatly, still staring at Kalani’s antics in the distance, “no, I climbed up and then I fell off.”

“Okay, I’m confused. How did Kalani have anything to do with it?” The guy was staring at Kalani with what looked like near hatred.

“He didn’t have to do anything. He was just there. It’s like he’s bad juju, or something. Stuff like that happens whenever he’s around. People will be having fun, that asshole shows up and suddenly someone’s being eaten by a shark.”

“Uh…like…um…bad luck or something?”

“Or something, alright.”

I didn’t pursue it with Tyler, but I got really interested for some reason and later asked one of the real ‘buds’ if he had had something like that happen. His name was Joey.

“Oh yeah! It happens to everybody that hangs around with him. Just bad shit, ya know?” he was nodding his head emphatically.

“You?”

“Shit, yeah! That little fuck and Pat and me went down to the International Market Place to score some pot and there was a bust goin’ down when we got there. We just thought it was funny, ya know? We were watchin’ an’ shit, laughin’ and suddenly this big Samoan cop is wrestling with one of the guys they're trying to arrest. The guy takes off at a run and the cop throws … THROWS his gun at the guy and hits Pat in the side of his head! He needed…fuck…he needed like twenty stitches or something.”

“Well, where was Kalani?”

“He was standing next to Pat.”

“Yeah, okay, but nothing happened to you, right?”

“Not that time.’

“So what happened to you? I mean, you know, when Kalani was around?”

He suddenly looked a little glassy and got kind of pale, “It’s kinda hard to talk about.”

I made a laughing sound that wasn’t really laughing and waited.

There was a long silence while Joey just stared off toward the Pali highway.

“So, are you going to tell me? Or what?”

“I’m not … it’s kind of embarrassing, ya know.”

“Did Kalani do something?”

“Oh no. No, it wasn’t anything like that. He never does anything. He’s just there when shit happens and a lot of shit happens when he’s around. A lotta shit!”

“So tell me!” I tried to keep my voice neutral like I wanted to know but didn’t care if he told me.

“Remember that girl, Angela?”

“Angela? The one … you met at Kaneohe?”

“No, that was … what the fuck was her name? Anyway … no … Angela came from the mainland. Was over here on vacation. Long brown hair. Funny. Was looking for a job at one of the hotels.”

“Oh yeah! Now I remember! About five-seven, brown hair, blue eyes?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, me, Angela, Tyler and that slut he was hanging out with and Kalani and some rental he’d found were all supposed to go up to the Pali and then over to North shore. Well, first Tyler and co. decided they were going to party with some tourists on a boat over at Ala Wai and Kalani asked if he could use Tyler’s car because they weren’t going to need it if they were going to be on a boat and Tyler, you know this was after he fucked up his leg falling off that highway rail, said who’s going to drive, and Kalani said it didn’t matter, he could or I could, whatever Tyler wanted. Well, I wasn’t there and Tyler was scared Kalani would fuck up his car so he said, okay, but Joey drives and has to meet us over by the harbor. And Kalani says sure, sure and then he asks, can I ride with you over there ‘cuz it’d be closer to where he was going to pick up his date. Well, Tyler says okay and he and that slut and Kalani all get in the car to go over to Ala Wai, only they never get there because some asshole runs a red and smashes in the side of Tyler’s car and breaks the sluts leg. So now Tyler has to go to the hospital with her and, you know, Kalani, once he decides he’s goin’ someplace, he’s goin’, but he’s late to his date so she won’t go. So he calls me and tells me Tyler and the slut are in the hospital but he still wants to go and do I know anyone with a car?”

“Oh fuck! Angela?”

“Yep.” “She was driving a rental,” and here Joey started talking in a girly voice. “Oh that’s okay Joey, I’ll drive, I don’t mind, I hope Tyler and the slut will be okay and get better soon and blah, blah, blah. And I’m like, shut up, you idiot, don’t say anything.” Joey was kind of laughing and waving his hands remembering everything.

“So then Angela and I get in her rental and head over to pick up Kalani and drive up Pali Highway. Big mistake. Everything is okay driving to get Kalani but as soon as he gets in the car shit starts happening. Angela sideswipes a cement bumper in the parking lot scratching the hell out of the fender, then we have to stop to put up the roof because it’s started to rain and the fucking thing gets stuck half-way up! Well, we finally get the goddam roof up but only after we’re all soaked and I’m like, shit, ya know, and Angela is pissed off because something else got fucked up. I don’t remember what, and then Kalani tries to calm things down and Angela says,” and Joey breaks into his girly voice again, “Oh Kalani, that’s so sweet! You are such a sweet heart. That’s so sweet! You are so wonderful and blah, blah, blah. And it really pissed me off, but then she starts asking him if he thought she and I should get married!! And I thought, FUCK! I just met you lady, I like you and all but Jesus fucking Christ, what the fuck! And asking Kalani, that was what really sucked! Like he would know about shit. Anyway, I got madder and madder and when we got up to the Lookout, I kept getting madder and made a stupid joke about jumping off or something and that dumb bitch said, go ahead Mighty Mouse, let’s see how well you fly.”

Joey turned really red just then and stopped talking. He just sat shaking his head and then grabbed his neck like it hurt. “This always bugs me when I think about this.” He just held his neck and sat quietly for a while and then said, “Fuck it.”

“I don’t know why I did it, okay? I just was so mad, I guess. Anyway, she said that Mighty Mouse shit and I popped. I turned around and ran to the edge and jumped over.”

“Fuck,” I said quietly.

“Yeah…man…I just ran and jumped. I heard her scream and Kalani yelled something and then, no shit, the wind, the fuckin’ wind, blew me ass over melon back up and right on top of fuckin’ Angela. Well, my legs hit her in the head or something and I went down hard on my shoulders and neck and smacked my head against the ground. Knocked myself colder than snot. It was fucked up. Angela caught something, maybe my foot or something on her lip and split it; had to have stitches. Got a huge fucking black eye. I got a dislocated shoulder and the doctor said I was lucky I didn’t break my fuckin’ neck. Well, he didn’t say ‘fuckin,’” Joey laughed a little, “and her elbow or her head or something, caught me in the balls as I went over her head and all I can say is I’m glad I was knocked out when it happened because when I came to all I could think of was that somebody had played a round of golf using my balls with the worst fucking handicap in the world.” Joey was a caddy part time at one of the golf courses.

“Youch!” I cringed in sympathetic pain, “Fuuuuck!”

“Dude. I was in the hospital for two days or some shit.”

I was still cringing and holding my crotch. “Jesus.”

“That little shit, Kalani, just stood there and watched me fly by too. His fucking stupid-ass, bent melon cover didn’t even come off. And ya wanna know what? He was fucking pissed that he couldn’t go to North Shore! That little scrap merchant asshole was fucking mad cause he couldn’t do what he wanted to do! I don’t know why the fuck I even still talk to that little fucker.”

Trying to be humorous, I said, “good ideas?”

“Fuck his ideas.”

That was months before the surfing trip and I had a lot of time to worry about what might happen to someone. But I worried more about Kalani’s numbers. Just you and me, he said. I figured that would mean four people. There were five. Negotiating on surfboard rentals, he said one because we would share. Kalani was always saying ‘Buds’ share. You weren’t a ‘Bud’ if you didn’t share. Pat asked him one day if that meant underwear too, because Kalani’s would be really tight on anybody else.

That was the only time I ever saw Kalani lose his temper and he expressed himself clearly but exactly like the boy who owns the ball. Kind of like, you have to be nice to me or I’ll take my ball and go home. The oddest thing was, it worked somehow. Pat listened and even though Kalani never drove, never helped carry stuff, never organized anything, and very, very rarely ever paid for anything, and his company was, well, dangerous, he came up with idea after idea after idea. I’m pretty sure no one exactly liked him, but Kalani’s ideas seemed to be gold, even if they mostly benefited Kalani.

There seemed to be only a couple of things Kalani really liked to do and one was surf. He wasn’t that great but he really liked it. He had had the idea of this trip for a long time and he got Pat to organize it, Joey to drive and me to pay. When I asked Pat why I had to rent surfboards when everyone had at least one board, I got the distinct impression a scam was involved when he told me to ask Kalani. Kalani would never have cheated his friends by selling their boards but he wasn’t above “losing” a board store’s sticks, especially if his name wasn’t on the rental slip. I made it really clear to Kalani that if I had to pay for rentals, I was going to pick the store. He tried to insist on some whack job place where there was a great deal because it was low season and I told him he could pay for a board or bring his own. He just gave me that dark red stare and shrugged.

When Joey and Pat showed up in the station wagon, Kalani started grinning because Tyler was with them. “The more the merrier!” He always liked it when unexpected people showed up.

“There’s only four boards, numb nuts! You told me four, dumbass!”

“Whatever.” That was Kalani’s answer. Whatever. I hate that shit.

“Whatever means you, dickweed, are staying on the beach, till someone decides to come in!”

“Fuck you, haole, you can stay in.”

“Let’s get something straight, butt munch, I fucking rented the boards and I’m fucking going out. I could give a shit what you do.” So I grabbed one of the boards and my leash and went straight into the water, which was fucking stupid but I’d gone crazy and wasn’t thinking.

None of those guys were unfriendly toward me but likewise they also weren’t real buds to me. They were Kalani’s buds. Joey and Pat were the best surfers with Tyler aggressively ready to try anything but without their skill. Kalani was okay, I guess, but he always seemed to wait for a certain kind of wave, letting plenty of good ones go.

They knew this break and I didn’t. It was a reef break but it was only a short paddle out and that day the waves weren’t really very good. They headed straight for the reef then jacked up fast and broke more on top of the reef than across it. The tide was somewhere midway between high and low but working toward low, which made the situation worse. I didn’t know the break; good-sized waves breaking on reef, upset, not good.

Of course, I had to be the dumbass. There was a couple of ways to get past the reef and I took the worst. I was sure of it when Pat got out ahead of me even though I’d started first. Naturally, he had to rub it in when he told me I should have gone the other way. Like I knew there was another way. Then Joey arrived and said the same thing, which pissed me off even more.

I could see Kalani and Tyler having a conversation, I guessed about who was going out first and Kalani must have won the argument because Tyler just went over and sat on the tailgate of the car.

Joey had already caught a wave and rode it right through the opening in the reef and Pat hooted for him. Pat asked me if I wanted to go ahead of him and I said no because I wanted to watch him go through that break in the reef to get a feel for where to start and in a couple of minutes Pat caught one and without any tricks sailed right through.

By that time Kalani was through the opening and outside. He didn’t say anything to me but he was looking at me with an expression I’d never seen before. It’s hard to describe but once you’d seen it you’d never forget. He was just looking at me like he was reading a book or something, maybe like he’d just seen what he wanted for lunch. His face was totally calm, empty, really, of everything. His dark red eyes were just looking at me. I was a little spooked.

It changed when I asked him if he wanted to go first. He just shook his head and said, “Go, bud.”

I think I was more spooked than I realized because I caught the first wave, the good one, too late and missed it as it passed under me so I just kept paddling like a barney and caught the next, which had me way out of position but I caught it anyway and did a really good pop up. But my desire to get away from Kalani had me on a collision course for the reef and sure enough I could see it coming. I don’t know why I didn’t just kick out or dive off the board but I didn’t. I just didn’t.

I felt the wave jack under me; saw the reef ahead and an area that was completely exposed by the ebbing tide. I knew I was going to wipe out. My balance was good, my trim was good, but I was going to wipe out on a reef on my first and last ride of the day. Then the road got really smooth, too smooth. The wave just dropped out, vanished, from underneath me. I still had my balance and forward momentum. I just had no wave. I was flying.

I even had momentary feeling that maybe I could fly completely over the reef and land in the lagoon on the other side but I didn’t. I was in a sort of crouched Silver Surfer position when I hit the coral. There was a grinding noise and I heard a kind of cruuunnch, then a loud popping snap. My momentum carried me in a run right off the nose of the board and onto the coral. There was an immediate stinging sensation just before another breaking wave caught me from behind and pushed me further on the coral and sent the board whizzing by my head. At that point I could feel the coral digging into my hands as well as my feet and then just as suddenly, I was swimming in the lagoon with the board floating upside down next to me.

With the salt water stinging my hands and feet, I reached out to grab the board and realized the leash was still caught on some coral so I painfully tugged it loose and in doing so, I guess the board was being pushed or something because when the leash came loose the tail hit me in the back of the head. Not hard, but enough to give me a bump. When I turned my body to right the board and slide onto its deck I noticed the skeg had snapped off.

I was about halfway back to the beach when I turned my head and saw Kalani come flying through the opening in the reef.


I had to pay for the broken longboard, and I only got a slight infection from the coral cuts. Joey and Pat stopped hanging with Kalani and I don’t know what happened to Tyler.

The last time I saw Kalani he tried to get me to give him a hotel room I had rented because he had a ‘girl friend’ and his new buds were playing poker in a room they rented together. I just told him to rent his own room and he told me I wasn’t a bud.

Duh.

RELIC

Photo: Diego Fernandes 2008



The day was tropical sticky wet with the thinnest of cloud cover. The air felt damp enough for rain but hot enough to boil eggs. Thin yellow skies hung over the islands like translucent sheets of silk.

I was restless and bored on the ship and I wanted something to do; I wanted something new, to go somewhere I hadn’t been, do something I hadn’t done, anything but whatever I was doing, but the humidity and heat made my imagination dull. Generally I like the heat and even the humidity but that day was just like being in a steam cooker.

I kept wandering outside onto the deck and looking at the sky hoping it would change. One of my shipmates finally asked me why I didn’t just go into town and do what everyone else did. What everyone else did just wasn’t my style. I didn’t even like beer and all the “hostesses” were irritating with their constant demands to buy them drinks or a helicopter. They thought the latter was funny and it may have been the first time, but the great seventeen block triangle of bars, upstairs and down, filled with hundreds of girls repeating the same joke quickly wore out my not very substantial patience.

Worse, as a kind of social lubricant I had, once upon a time, learned to read palms, and actually got quite good at it. One evening, to entertain myself as much as the girl I was buying drinks for, I decided to read her palm. Apparently I was so successful, she left and told every girl in the place, all of whom came running to my table, leaving their not so happy “boyfriends” and literally pushing the shipmate sharing my table out of the way so they could have their hands read. He was mostly unhappy because they wouldn’t let him get to his beer, although one of the girls finally picked it up, and without even turning, handed it to him over another girl’s head. After that the girls in town called me “Gypsy” and it was difficult to find a bar where a girl wouldn’t know the nickname, or, if one of my shipmates saw me coming, he would ask me, politely, to leave.

Some of the sailors maintained “permanent” girlfriends and even paid for apartments if they thought they could afford them. They measured their success with the girl by how loyal she seemed to be to their efforts at making her domestic. The girl’s loyalty was mostly demonstrated in cooking for her “man”, meaning the guy who paid for the food or her apartment. During the evening, it was an even bet that she would be at home or working in one of the dozens of bars. The girls knew what the priority was, and extreme poverty kept them working for any of the dribs and drabs of cash that found itself their way. Many women had out-of-wedlock children. My shipmates from the Midwest and the South called them illegitimate, even when the children were theirs. They didn’t care. Their wives back home had kids (of whom they would frequently share snapshots) and those were legitimate. These other children, “half-breeds”, were relegated to a class similar to cracked pottery. With one sole exception, a fellow who cared for, and tried to adopt (I never knew whether his adoption efforts ever paid off) two children that were left mostly to their own devices by their mother, I do not remember any of the guys with kids paying any attention at all to them; each man’s concern was the availability and loyalty of his woman.

No sailor I knew would go into town in the middle of the day, even for his woman. It wasn’t unheard of, but it was rare, and in the middle of a day like that, exceptionally rare. Deciding steam-cooked adventure was better than boredom, I got dressed in my civvies anyway and made my way topside. At the brow, the OOD and the enlisted guy on watch looked wilted, large sweat stains showing under their armpits and in the OOD’s case a massive sweat stain at his groin. I do well in heat. I only sweat lightly even in humid conditions, so I started to make the obvious joke about his sweat stained crotch but he cut me off with an abrupt, “…don’t say it! I’ve already heard the same thing about ten times.” So I cheerily waved and told them to drink plenty of water, and in spite of the heat and my rather oppressed mood almost bounced down the gangway. I heard the enlisted man yell something after me about getting some, or getting him some, but I really didn’t pay any attention.

The first thing I decided to do was get a haircut at the base shop where for a very small fee, servicemen got haircuts, facial and torso massage and manicure, all in one convenient chair, and it was cool. That day I got the works, even the manicure.

The barber was a local who wasn’t inclined to chat, which I appreciated. He was also the most precise of the men who worked in the shop. He not only knew the legal requirements of military haircutting, he knew the way around those rules which was important in those days when men in civilian life all had long hair. After cutting your hair he gave meticulous attention to removing all the loose hair. If you needed a shave, you were shaved rapidly with a strait razor that moved so quickly I am sure some clients feared for their lives.

Having accomplished the shave the barber would wrap a hot towel over your face and while your pores were opening or whatever it was they were supposed to do, he would massage neck and shoulder muscles until the towel cooled. Replacing the now cooled towel with another hot one, he massaged arms and hands. Then he removed that towel and pushing you forward, would massage your back down to the waistline and when finished there leaned you, by that point you were usually the consistency of wet pasta, back into the headrest, placed another hot towel on the face and massaged your chest and abdominal muscles. He removed the final towel and spread a thin layer of green or pink clay on your face and with a hair dryer on cool, blew the mud dry. Afterward he took another hot, wet towel and thoroughly cleaned the mud off. Then almost slapped a cold wet towel against your steaming face.

He would finish with the manicure. Nails, cuticles and, when requested, clear enamel were worked with a rapidity that seemed unreal. When I asked him one day why he worked so fast, he said, “…done this long time, sailors always in a hurry.”

I was never quite comfortable with the abdominal massage. It was just one of those procedures that seemed strange and too intimate but I never failed to let him do his work. I hesitated asking in any case because I thought it might disturb his routine. That day was the only time he commented on his work on me. “You more work here,” he said as he kneaded my midsection. I wasn’t quite sure what he meant. I thought for a moment he was telling me I needed to do sit-ups, then because of the way he changed the movement of his hands, became fairly confident that he meant he needed to do more work.

“Too much time sit. You go walk.” That last was a command. He pushed me out of the chair and with a couple of quick swipes of a soft brush cleaned any remaining hair off my neck and clothing. When I paid him I always left a large tip. That day he just pushed it back at me and said, “go find nice girl.” I laughed and told him nice girls probably wouldn’t be taking money and lay the tip on his counter. He said gravely, “you good man. You go church, nice girl pray.” Then he turned to help another customer and I left the coolness of the shop and stepped back into the tropic sun.

The moment I first found myself in a tropic zone I knew I was home. Most Americans have a “nice for a visit, but wouldn’t want to live here” attitude about tropical climates. Come to think of it, that attitude persists no matter what the climate unless one was talking about one’s native region. My Midwestern buddies always exclaimed about the seasonal changes and the variety of weather; Southerners spoke rather fondly of their bugs for some reason; Northeasterners didn’t speak about their environment so much as the variety of activities that could be had in their part of the world.

I am a Californian. We like speed and change; we don’t care about climate much. If it gets too cold we build a fire of one sort or another, if it gets too hot we take off our clothing or invent a remote control air conditioner. When neither of those is an option, we migrate. If the climate seems extreme, then we write stories and make movies about it, it’s fun. The tropics are extreme in themselves. They require no embellishment or exaggeration; the tropics simply need to be experienced and lived.

When I stepped out of the barbershop and into the street that day, I was ready for another tropical experience. I really had no idea where I was going or what I was going to do. I just knew it was steamy hot, and I had just been told to go to church. I was certainly not about to visit the base chapel, so I did the next best thing, I walked over the bridge and into town and went looking for a church.

As I walked I tried to remember if I had ever even seen a church in town, and nothing at all came to mind. Not that I had ever come into town with the objective of going to church, but churches are usually pretty obvious. We sailors came into town at night with the lights from the bars glowing and the sound from the bar bands blaring into the streets. At that time the streets would be filled with vendors selling barbequed meat on sticks or pickled eggs; touts would be standing in every doorway waving any who would respond, inward toward “the best band” or “the prettiest girls” and occasionally “the best floor show”. The 'Strip' was crawling with small boys learning how to become pickpockets, mobbing an unwary serviceman and relieving him of all accessories and 'Brownshirts', the Federal Police, ready and willing to shoot them on sight. The air was redolent with the smells of polluted water, roasted meat and dust and unwashed bodies, vomit, feces and urine. Separated into component parts not particularly pleasant, but as a whole experience, rather exotic and exciting. You wouldn’t be able to spot a church easily at night. But I wasn’t walking through the town at night.

It was one o’clock in the afternoon. The streets were empty of sailors and marines. Many of the bars were shut against the day with metal pull-down gates. In a few open doorways, girls leaned against the doorjambs trying to look sexy to entice the occasional passerby inside. I watched as one girl, looking sadly forlorn at her street post, perk up when joined by another who seemed to materialize out of an interior darkness, turn happily to her companion; they talked briefly then the first, replaced by the second, vanished within. As soon as the first girl disappeared, the second took on the demeanor of the first girl, dejected and bored.

Leaving the bar district, I entered into an area of small shops selling fish and rice and produce for the local population. This wasn’t an area commonly seen by servicemen. The mid-day heat was keeping even most of the locals indoors, but a group of six or seven children were playing a game that looked like Ring Around the Rosie, only with a soccer ball being passed back and forth through a puddle. All the children were uniformly poor and were dressed in ragged pass-me-down clothing. One little girl with curly bright blond hair stood out among her dark-haired friends. As I passed the group they cautiously moved aside and stared at me. I wondered if they had ever seen a serviceman in the middle of the day, but after they knew I wasn’t stopping to talk, they all waved and smiled and one of the boys kicked the ball in my direction, to which I simply kicked it back and continued onward.

The town was built in a river valley running roughly east west between some low hills. As I walked, I could see the treeless condition of the north ridgeline. To the south, rain forest made it’s way right up to the edge of town, but the northern ridge had only a few small shrubs trying to survive in a deeply eroded desert-like hillside.

I stopped to make sense of this and was staring at that sere landscape when a voice behind me asked in a rather comically gruff voice, “what’re yew doin’ in town? I thought I tol’ ya this town ain’t big enough fer th’ both of us.” Turning, I saw a friend from the ship, Brian, smiling his lazy smile at me and peering over the top of his sunglasses.

“Couldn’t help myself. Mad dogs and Englishmen, doncha know.”

“Huh?” Apparently, he had never heard the song.

“Song…my grandmother used to sing. Only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the noon day sun.” I sang merrily.

“Mad dogs and Englishmen huh? And us. What are you looking at?”

“Well, look over there,” I pointed to the south, “covered with jungle. Totally. Right? Now, look over there,” I turned to the north, “nothing.”

Brian looked back and forth from south to north for a moment and then grunted, “looks like they stripped that hillside for some reason.” Then he paused and looking at the northern side, squinted and asked, “what’s that?”

“What? Where are you looking?” I tried to look in the general direction of his glance but the glare from the street was too bright and I asked him for the loan of his sunglasses.

“They’re prescription,” he warned, but handed them to me.

“They sure are,” I drawled, “how do you see through these things?”

“Better question is how could I see without ‘em.”

“I can’t use them, they’re way too strong for me,” I said, handing them back. “Now try and point where you’re looking.” So he held up his arm and I sighted along it to the mountainside. Shading my eyes by completely cupping both hands around them, I finally saw it. A rather large crucifix planted more than half way up the hillside. "How have I missed that?" I wondered aloud, and then answered myself, "I’ve never been here during the day ... Do you suppose we could get up there?” I asked.

“Sure,” Brian responded heartily, “if only we had climbing gear and supplies for what? A week? Sure!”

“Brian,” I whined a bit, “that isn’t even a mile away from here. That would be an easy, easy walk.”

“Yeah,” he said in a flat voice, “On a perfect spring day! Haven’t you noticed? It is really, really, really hot out here. I vote we go get something cool to drink.”

“Right there, my friend, on the other side of this very street, is a store where you may buy something cool to drink. And all the fresh fruit you could ever want.”

“Uh… I meant something cool to drink, as in say, alcoholically cool. Back that way,” he pointed back in the direction of the bars.

I began to cluck like a chicken and then stopped abruptly. “What are you doing here in the middle of the day anyway?” I asked rather peremptorily.

Grinning, he said, “I saw you come out of the barbershop on base and just thought I’d follow you and see where you went.”

“You followed me all the way from the base?”

“Yep. And I almost turned back when I saw you pass the Strip. I’ve never been this far into town, and I’m not sure I ever want to come back this way again either.”

“Let me guess; you’re broke and you were hoping I’d buy you a beer?”

“Nope, but if you’re offering, I accept.”

“I am not offering…yet. Go with me up there, though” I pointed at the crucifix, “and I’ll buy you a couple of beers.”

“I don’t know why you want to go up there. It’s just a cross with a Jesus built in the middle of a … a desert. And it’s hot! It’s hot! I could fry an egg on the sidewalk out here.”

“If there were any sidewalks, you mean. And anyway, your eggs would probably be steamed instead of fried. Come on! Where’s your sense of adventure?”

I don’t know why he agreed to go, but he did. He complained about every hundred steps and when we got to the edge of the hillside, looked up at our destination and said, “we, oh Lord, are going to need your everlasting help, to get our sorry butts up this fucking hill!”

“I don’t believe,” I said thoughtfully, “I have ever heard anyone petition Jesus’ help to get their sorry butt up a fucking hill. But your point is well taken. Where does that path up there start?”

Glancing back and forth across the hillside, Brian pointed at a spot about a quarter of a mile further east, “still sure you want to do this?” he said querulously like an old man.

“I,” and I paused for drama, “am as fresh as a daisy. A very hot fresh daisy. A very hot fresh tropical sort of daisy. A very hot fresh tropical sort of daisy with …”

“I get it,” he interrupted.

Unfortunately, with buildings and houses and fences built smack up against the mountain we couldn’t follow the hillside directly to the trailhead and had to backtrack another quarter of a mile to a street running parallel to the mountain. Then we panted our way to take another street eastward, to find the small side street which lead to the beginning of the trail, which street, also unfortunately, we had to search to find, adding what probably only seemed like miles, to our trek. Brian was sweating heavily and quite red in the face when we finally reached the trailhead.

To cool off, we asked a sympathetic older woman if she had anything to drink. Leaving us sitting cross-legged on her tiny porch she hurried inside her corrugated tin house and brought back two cold colas. How she kept them cold was a mystery, which neither Brian nor I ever solved, but she was truly sympathetic, especially when she learned we were trying to reach the hillside crucifix. Brian offered her money for the drinks but she steadfastly refused. I asked her if there was anything we could do before we left to which she just shook her head and in her heavily accented English told us to just say a prayer for the town.

When we left the shade of her small porch facing the mountain, Brian was silent for about five minutes, which I attributed to the heat but then he suddenly asked, “why do you suppose she wanted us to pray for the town?”

“I don’t know. Maybe she just thinks the town needs people praying for it.” Even I was feeling a little cooked, so I spoke a little shortly to him.

“She seemed … I don’t know … she seemed like … she seemed like the town needed something. Protection maybe.”

“What? Where did you get that? She just asked us to say a prayer for the town.”

“It was how she said it, you know? She kept looking over that way,” and he pointed inland toward the rain forest.

“She was pretty old, maybe she remembers the Japanese coming from over there …”

“Japanese came from the sea, dork. Over there!” and he pointed toward the base.

“Well then, maybe she wanted something from over there.”

As we talked the trail rose precipitously westward and rather unlike the streets of the town, was litter free. When I made a verbal note of this to Brian, he laughed, “not a lot of Americans up here.” But it was an irregular climb and totally washed out in places. Wide gullies had to be climbed around or through and the loose gravel and dirt made treacherous footing. In a while however, we overlooked the rooftops and a soft breeze from the bay was blowing in our faces. “GOD! That feels good!” Brian exclaimed to the waiting crucifix, still an eighth mile or so distant.

“Wow. What a view up here.” I said in a quiet counterpoint. “Look. There’s the ship!”

“Who cares? We see the fucking ship every day. But look over there; you can see those islands at the mouth of the bay and the shuttle boats. This is such a nice breeze, I’m not sure I want to go back down through that again,” and he pointed at the town, “I think I’m staying.”

“Gotta. How else will we get back? Jitney? I don’t think they make it up here too often. What would you eat? Those thorny looking bushes? Nope, you’ll go back, even if it’s only for the beer.”

Brian flipped me the bird.

“Speaking of beer, I wonder if Jesus will turn the dirt into beer ... for you, of course.”

“I’m thinking not. Just a guess, of course, but I just gotta feeling.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right. We’ve been using way too much profanity on our pilgrimage.”

“Pilgrimage?”

“Well,” I wasn’t quite sure when I had first started thinking of this as a pilgrimage, “isn’t it kind of like a pilgrimage? Think of everything we’ve gone through to get here.”

“You mean, a couple of side streets and over a couple of mud puddles? Or rather, a mud puddle? All that?”

“Mud puddle? Oh, you mean that one where those kids were playing. No…I just meant, we came through all this heat in the middle of the day when no one else, even them,” and I waved at the town, “seems to want to be outside. So we gave ourselves a little challenge, and here we are!”

“I have to admit, the heat is a big challenge for me, I am fried. Even you are beginning to get a little red.”

“Oh crap! I forgot to put on sunblock!”

“Guess what, genius? I’ve got some right here.” With that Brian reached in his pocket and pulled out a tiny tube of sunscreen. “I didn’t forget.” Then he held it out, but when I reached for it, he pulled back his hand in a teasing gesture. “What do I get for some of this?”

“I already have to buy you a couple of beers. What else do you want?”

“Let’s see … I’m not sure right at the moment. I’ll think of something. I want it to be something good.”

“How good? I can survive a little sunburn.”

“Let me think.” We were approaching the crucifix, and breathing heavily from the last rise in the trail. Brian looked at the cross, handed me the tube and said, “I’ll get back to ya.”

The crucifix was standing in a saddle of the mountain about fifty feet across. The monument itself was placed as close to the rising hillside as the builders could get it, with the rest of the natural saddle leveled for spectators. The crucifix stood about twenty feet high with the cross painted white and the naked flesh of the Christ figure in an almost flamingo pink and wearing a bright blue loincloth. The figure’s hair was painted in shiny black enamel and around his head was a delicate wooden crown of thorns painted in an unnatural brown color, so unnatural, I wondered why they hadn’t simply left the wood bare.

The most startling aspect to the piece wasn’t the brilliant red paint dripping from the wounds made by the crown of thorns and the nails in his limbs, but rather the look of sheer terror and agony on his face. In the distance, the crucifix had looked like a pretty standard Roman Catholic monument. Up close, the colors looked silly until the viewer looked carefully at the expression on the Christ’s face. The figure was staring into the town below and the sculptor had caught pain, fear, in a terrifying intimate way. There was no calm benevolent glance in the face; it was a cry for mercy.

Brian and I were silent as we stared at that tortured visage. Brian made a small noise in his throat and walked closer. “Look at the crown of thorns, Jim.”

I walked closer and realized that what I had thought was painted wood was some kind of rusted bayonet wire with three to six inch long spiked points thrusting into the statues head and the viewers mind. I was staring up at the INRI scroll which was moving in the breeze when I started to say something smartass, but then I noticed Brian had moved suddenly to the base of the monument and looked to be suddenly caressing the statues feet, or holding them with his head resting in the crease between the legs.

At first I thought maybe he needed something to hold onto because of heat stroke or dehydration. Then with his hands still clasping the feet he had sagged limply to his knees. Then I could hear him muttering something quietly but couldn’t make out what he said. I stood quietly paralyzed for a moment then scurried over and put my hand on his shoulder, “are you all right?” I was genuinely concerned. Because of the heat I couldn’t tell if he was shedding tears or sweating. He nodded and pulled his shirt tail up to wipe his face.

“Something about the face. I … saw ... felt.” He was obviously shaken, but stood up still holding the Christ's feet.

I wanted to ask what he felt but doing so seemed wrong. “Should we say one for the town, now?” I asked quietly wondering if we shouldn't just go back to town. Again, he nodded. To my surprise, Brian got down on one knee; I just closed my eyes, tried not to think about Brian's seeming collapse, and bowed my head.

I don’t remember what I asked for the town, but as flippant as I sometimes can be, I participated as fully as I knew how. Brian seemed to know what he was doing so I just took my cues from him. I don’t think he was especially religious or even particularly Christian, I certainly am not, but in that moment, we were as sincere as Believers.

When I opened my eyes I was staring at the ground in front of me and as I moved, I caught the glint of something mostly buried in the red dirt. Reaching down I pulled an intact green glass rosary with a tiny gold-colored metal crucifix out of the dirt. I rubbed some of the dirt off while thinking the piece must have been dropped because it was somehow flawed.

I don’t know why, but I kept looking at it thinking there must have been a part of it broken or damaged for someone to have dropped and left such a pretty thing. The rosary was completely undamaged. The beads were a deep emerald color and made in the shape of hearts and the circular part met at a piece made of the same metal as the crucifix with the image of the sacred heart on both sides. The tiny figure of Jesus rested against what looked like an inlay of the same green glass as the beads. The little banner reading “INRI” was tilted almost jauntily.

When Brian asked to see it, I rubbed a little more dirt off on my pants and handed him the rosary perhaps just a trifle anxiously. I wasn’t sure why, but I was afraid he would do something like pull it apart or throw it over the precipice facing the town. He just took it though, examined the metal Jesus and handed it back to me.

“What are you going to do with it?”

I couldn’t tell him why, but I looked around the empty saddle of the mountain expecting the owner to come up and say, “excuse me, but I dropped my rosary and I would like to have it back.” When I told Brian this strange thought, he just laughed a little and said, “nobody here but us chickens.”

“What do you suppose happened?”

“Don’t know, buddy. Maybe … I don’t know.”

“I just had this thought that somebody came up here and got really disappointed, or disgusted.”

“You mean because it “didn’t work”?” He used his hands to make quote marks in the air.

“Something like that. It looks like a girl’s rosary … maybe she came up here and was saying her rosary and … maybe nothing happened, or she just dropped it and couldn’t find it.”

“Then she must have been up here at night. That would be pretty hard to miss if it was just laying on this ground.”

“Yeah, I guess so. I don’t know, the whole thing just gets my imagination going.” With that I put the rosary in my pocket and forgot about it.

Facing away from the giant crucifix, Brian and I walked to edge of the cliff over-looking the town and stood trying to pick out landmarks. What we saw were the buildings of the town, crammed so tightly together, the location of streets had to be guessed. The entire city looked like someone had jammed all the stovepipe chimneys on all the roofs of all the messy looking rusted tin shacks up against the river where it was force-fed a view. Across the river in a bright contrast, were the clean strips of black tarmac streets, neat white stucco walls of barracks and other buildings, all separated by the perfect patches of green clipped lawns and waving palms of the naval base.

On our side of the river, inside the town not one spot of green, grass or tree, could be seen. The town was a desert just like the side of the mountain where we stood. From the vantage of the crucifix, one side of the river looked like a raggedy man begging for the attention of his wealthy brother on the opposite shore. Brian and I were silently sharing an unforgettable experience.

“No wonder they think we’re all rich,” Brian spoke suddenly bitter, “look at that! Compared to any one of them, we are rich.”

I was thinking the same thing and told him so. “And tonight, we go into town, spend all the money in our pockets, tell them we’re out of money, go back to the base and repeat the whole thing tomorrow night. It must be like magic to them. Run out of money? Just go back and get some more.”

“I heard one of the chiefs talking with someone about how we improve their economy. Look at that, Jim. How have we improved their economy? Bars and hookers? Why don’t we offer to level the town and put in housing and air conditioning or something? Why don’t we clean up that fucking river? That’s just an open sewer! And those little kids swim in it. Do you know what happens to you if you fall in that river? The fucking Navy gives you every inoculation known to man, that’s what! Those little kids jump in that crap for coins that we throw at them …”

“ And miss on purpose,” I interjected. I was feeling disgusted with myself. I didn’t want to remember throwing coins into that river.

“… and miss on purpose …” Brian’s voice choked and he stopped speaking abruptly. Running away from me to the west, I could hear him gagging and trying to control the impulse to throw up. I stood listening and felt the gorge rising in myself, looked out over the town and felt my knees buckle, and both of us were vomiting into the chasm.

“Brian, I …,” I started to say something and vomited again.

He laughed weakly and said, “yeah, I know. … Jim,” he interrupted himself, paused and struggled for the words, “Jim,” he repeated, “I was looking through his eyes … I don’t know how … I was looking from up there!” Brian’s voice was catching as he tried to speak. He was crying but seemed to be getting through the experience.

It took me longer to regain my composure. Ever since I was little, vomiting made me cry. This time I had a reason. Brian stood waiting patiently though and leaked tears with me.

“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” I sniffled a little angrily, “this is just stupid!”

Brian, wiping at his tears, laughed a bit saying, “I know what you mean. It’s too hot to cry like this.”

We both started laughing and crying at that, and started walking back to town wiping our faces with our shirttails. We passed the woman who had given us the colas and we waved and she waved and we smiled and she smiled showing us her missing teeth.