He finishes gathering
firewood about an hour before sunset: She's
sitting on the towel porch staring out at the
ocean:
Spencer//What's for dinner?//
Loey//I don't know, I've never known, it's
not a part of my true nature to know what's
for dinner.//
He picks up a stick and breaks it in his
hands, takes the smaller piece and stirs the
ashes into the cracks of the sea rock
fire-ring:
Spencer//Time to clean the oven pretty
soon.//
After dinner he takes up a
stick lying next to him, takes out his
pocket-knife and starts whittling:
Loey//In your story, you wrote 'The ocean is
rows of blue people,' well, do they turn
black at night?//
Later, she finally looks
down at the piece of wood:
Loey//Can I see that?//
He hands it to her:
Spencer//I found it when I was out gathering
firewood, there's this wash that has tons of
driftwood in it, at one point last winter
where we're sitting right now was under three
feet of water, must have been a tremendous
storm, anyway, I found this piece of wood,
it's pretty neat, huh, looks like a human
brain, a little wooden human brain, some sort
of ulcerous growth, but look at the wood,
it's been in the ocean for a long time, I
would guess it comes from the orient.//
Loey//Why did you sharpen the two ends?//
Spencer//I don't know, clean it up a little,
add something of myself, I call it 'Floating
Brain.'//..
Pebble With
Hole
He crawls out of the tent
very early, puts on his trunks and walks
quickly to the water and dives in: Sometimes
Loey greets him on shore with a towel,
sometimes, shivering, he hangs his trunks to
dry and crawls into the tent, and crawls
under the blankets and rubs against her and
she groans, pushes him away sleepily, but he
persists until warm, then she rolls into his
arms, and they sleep some more or just lie
there watching the colors impregnate the tent
as the sun rises:
Breakfast is the big meal
of the day: The fire needs to be started an
hour before they eat: They eat as they cook
for they only have two pans, one for coffee,
one for eggs and pota-toes, and toast is made
on the open grill: They cook and eat and talk
for several hours: They go together
afterwards and clean the pans and dishes with
the coarse white sand and calm warm
waters of tide pools: Minnows darting for the
scraps of food when the surge subsides:
It is in one such tide pool
that he finds a small smooth round pebble
with a hole worn through its center:
She smiles as he puts it up to his eye and
looks through:
Spencer//Same world.//
Just as he slings back his arm to hurl the
pebble into the ocean she stops his arm with
a motion: He places the pebble in her hand
and she puts it in her shirt pocket:
He would then go surfing,
or he'd build huge sandcastles right on the
mud-like edge of the water which he sits in
until the tide wins, or he walks along the
beach with Loey, sometimes all the way to the
cove at the end where they shed their bathing
suits and sun bathe and make love..
Pelicano
Feathers
On one such sojourn to the
cove, following a shifty night, they come
across a beautiful black plume on the
windswept beach, a pelicano feather lying
gently on the pearl sand as if thoughtfully
placed there by a fairie:
He carries it to the cove:
They undress and lie in the sun side by side:
After a short nap he wakes with the feather
in his hand, turns to her and lightly dances
the feather across her sleeping body until
she slowly becomes aware of the feather,
smiles without opening her eyes, laughs a
little when he brushes her sides, holds her
breath as he teases her nipples:
After making love they dive into the ocean;
towel, lie in the sun until warm, dress, then
head back:
As they leave, just past
the first rocks of the cove, they find
another pelicano feather, just as large, as
black and shiny, but this one curves in the
opposite direction; surprized, it was not
there on their way in:
Spencer//This feather comes from a different
pelican, perhaps they were lovers.//
Farther down the beach, Spencer//They are
each separate paths, but when together they
are a single path even though they are two.//
Once back at camp he ties
the feathers together with cactus string then
ties them to the top of the tent:
Where they shimmy in the breezes without
making noise:
Several days later Loey
unties them after breakfast and crawls into
the tent and caresses her body with them
while Spencer is out surfing: When he comes
in they make love until they're
sticky and hot, put on their suits and go for
a swim:
The rest of the day tney
lie in the sun and swim and sit in the shade
of the palm trees until it's time to start
the fire for dinner..
Chipped
Shell
They drive into town every
other day, for ice, water, fresh bread,
tortillas, eggs, goat cheese, vegetables and
fruit: The dirt road to the highway is short
but tortuous, meanders
tnrough the communal farm lands, and often
they have to wait for farm animals or farm
machinery, they give rides to the workers
from one field to another: Spencer's Spanish
naive
but clear, he says things like "To
cultivate the Earth is to cultivate a
god," which they silently appreciate
now, before it had been a shock to them to
hear such fragments spoken by the young
surfer with shoulder length blonde hair, they
sit silently crowded in the back seat
sneaking looks at Loey in her tee shirt, she
often turns around and tries to communicate
with them and this is always fun, everyone
laughing:
Once they reach the highway it's a short
drive into town:
There are quite a few
children beggars in town who sell gum or
pieces of fruit or who wash car windows, and
the tourists passing through keep them busy:
It is from one such child
who approaches them at a stop sign that they
receive a sea shell, not a very pretty one,
it's chipped and dirty; they give him their
loose coins for it, and once he's gone
Spencer feels they've made a mistake:
Loey//He was so cute!//
This shell plays no part in
the rest of their experience here, it had
been absently placed in the glove compartment
and wasn't discorered until months later,
back home, when Loey cleaned out the glove
compartment and brought it to Spencer, and he
remembered it and they hugged and smiled.
Today is Friday and as
usual Spencer stops and picks up a case of
beer after the rest of the shopping is
finished: They pick up two workers on the way
in to the beach, Spencer offers
them each a beer, which they graciously
accept, and when he lets them out, their
beers half- finished, they worry about the
bottles, and after several failed attempts
they communicate to Spencer that he will be
able to find the two bottles under a certain
scrawny papaya tree the next time he drives
to town: The deposit on the bottles is
negligible but, as Spencer knows, when you
show up with empties missing from a case, the
beer dealer becomes almost angry:
Every Friday, just as the
sun sets, Raul and Ramon walk out to the
beach and set up their tent near Spencer and
Loey's: They sit around the fire and talk or
sing:
They wake up early, drink
coffee and share what breads they brought
from home, with them taking turns borrowing
Spencer's big wave board and the other riding
the old water-logged
board they both own, all three go surfing..
Little
Yellow Gourd
Loey spends her days
collecting shells and things and creating
jewelry or taking photographs or just lying
in the sun reading or watching Spencer surf
or the whales stopping to frolick just
offshore on their way north to Scammon's
lagoon where each year the whales gather to
mate and bear offspring:
She washes the car with the
last of their water, Spencer accuses her of
wanting to go to town, but she pleads
innocence:
Spencer//We're in a desert, for God's sake,
water is precious, I know the car was dirty,
but//
And they have a good laugh:
They go into town and fill up the wrater
containers and eat dinner, drink margritas at
one of the two restaurants:
The dirt road to the beach
is extremely hazardous at night, the moon
disappears early, even when it's full it's
flat with the horizon and casts awful shadows
of cacti, different trees and tall brush, the
faint lights of the constellations produce
little but the eyes can adjust:
Wild dogs and loose farm
dogs take over the farmlands: Sometimes they
come out to the beach to sniff around:
Spencer thumps the wall of the tent, and they
run off:
The first night this
happened Spencer got up and crawled outside:
He chased them off: The next day he peed in
the four corners of their campsite, which
kept the dogs away, but they
returned with the next full moon:
He walks to a distant bush
to go to the bathroom, the powdery rabbit
trail pale orange under the stars: On his way
back he comes across a small yellow gourd in
the path which he picks up, reaching camp he
shines the flashiight on it, then crawls in
to show it to Loey, but she's asleep, he
hesitates to wake her, he crawls under the
blankets and lies there thinking of what's
stopping him from waking her and presenting
the beautiful gourd..
Meeting
Spencer//You have a face
I'd dream, if I were to be invited to come
real close to it just once.//
Loey laughed:
Loey//What'll you have?//
Spencer//l just told you, I want you, you
have the tightest, sexiest body I've ever
seen, and you have so much beauty within you
it radiates, penetrates right through to my
soul.//
Loey//You talk good shit, but l'm afraid
that's all it is, I've got a jealous
bartender,//she nods toward him:
Spencer/lThis is who I am, I don't have any
jealousy within me, I only know about what
other people call jealousy.//
Loey//Don't your girlfriends mind?//
Spencer//Some do, they don't think I could
possibly love them if I'm not jealous, they
confuse jealousy or some form of jealousy,
with love, others tell me it gives them a
freedom
they never dreamed of, not that they fuck
around, but it allows them to be themselves
completely and they thank me for it.//
After work they walked to
his hotel: He was only in Chicago for ten
more days and that first night he asked her
to go on a surf trip with him to Baja:
She just smiled:
Over the next eight days he described what it
would be like to camp on a beach in Mexico
for the entire winter:
On his last day in Chicago
she said yes, packed, quit her job at the
bar, and they flew to San Diego where they
bought a car and drove south..
The 'Thing'
Sometimes Spencer sits in
the shade of the palm trees, or in the heat
of the tent and reads and writes: He's
writing a novel, his third, about a couple,
John and Anna, camped out on a beach in
Mexico. One day John comes across a
'thing'--it's about four feet long, dark
brown with purple specks--at first he thinks
it's a beached baby seal or a huge octopus or
squid, he walks around it, left high on the
beach by the previous night's tide, it
breathes, he pokes it with his finger--it's
skin is tough but slimy like a squid's: He
runs and gets Anna and brings her to it:
Anna//What is it?//
John//I'm not sure, let's move it back into
the water.//
Anna//l'm not touching it.//
John drags it to the
water's edge, when the water comes in it
makes no move, but seems to just go with the
flow like a jellyfish: John lifts it again,
to take it out further--as he lets it go in
waist deep water it rolls over: There's a
face--two eyes and two tiny nostrils and a
small mouth--it makes a whining sound,
pathetic and yearning: Using its sides as
flaps it swims off:
John tells Anna about the
face and the sound:
The waves are too small to
surf, so John and Anna take a walk to the
cove at the end of the beach:
On their way back they find
the 'thing' beached again, this time John
turns it over, it opens its eyes, its mouth,
and makes the same sound as before..
Rock Shard
John talks Anna into
helping him carry it to the large tide pool
just down from their tent, the tide pool Anna
loves to sit and cool off in on especially
hot afternoons:
They set it gently in the pool then sit and
watch as it rolls over and swims around on
its back like an otter: it repeats the sound
and looks directly into John's and Anna's
eyes:
John//What should we call him?//
Anna//How about 'The Blob?'//
John//Fred, how about Fred--if I had a dog
that's what I'd call him?//
Anna//Fred?//
The sory sometimes amuses
Spencer and other times seems impossible to
continue: Loey likes to discuss it, which at
first annoyed Spencer, but then he began to
appreciate her comments: If he hasn't written
in several days Loey starts talking about it
and Spencer starts writing:
One Friday night, as they
sit around the fire drinking beers with Raul
and Ramon, all of a sudden one of the sea
rocks of the fire-ring explodes: When this
happens the rocks usually crack, but this
time a small shard flies at Spencer's head:
He moves his head, the shard whizzes right
past him:
He gets up and walks over to it, bends down
and picks it up, it burns his fingers, he
drops it, waits a moment and picks it up and
passes it around to everyone, then goes to
the tent and places it in the cloth bag he
keeps near his pillow which contains Floating
Brain and the Little Yellow Gourd..