“Hello,” I said politely into the oval, honey-breathed mouth. “How’s the life?”
“Suh-WOMP!” prompted the bullfrog and I dropped the plant as though burned and fled westward again.
When Lee reaches the top of the dunes he shivers at the sight: a few hundred yards away the ocean lies, peaceful and gray, with its lacy edge turned back upon the beach like a chenille bedspread ready for night (The moon led the boy across the dunes. A scant sliver of moon that barely lit the beckoning surf); but there is the sand . . .
I finally emerged at the base of a steep bank of golden sand and clambered upward on all fours, filling pockets and shoes. The Oregon dunes are of the finest, cleanest, and most uniform sand found in America; constantly moving, forever sifted by summer winds and washed by winter rains, and extending in some areas for miles without tree or bush or flower, too orderly to be the work of haphazard nature and too immense to be the product of man, they present an unreal world to even the casual observer—to my already cockeyed eye, as I achieved the crest of the bank, the dunes presented a terrain forbidding in the extreme.
He trudges toward that bed’s embroidered spread, heedless of his feet in his trancelike walking (Halfway to the sea, completely alone on a bare, sweeping field of sand, the little boy
vanished . . .) and feels disappointed when he reaches the dunes’ edge: What had I imagined might happen, here in broad daylight out on a completely featureless field of sand? (vanished—into close and musty dark, vanished down into the black and moonless earth itself!)
At the edge of the dunes where the beach began, a sun-silvered pile of logs separated the sea’s territory from the territory of dry land, like an absurd wooden wall. I climbed across it, wondering what I would do to distract myself and pass the hour until it was time to meet Viv . . .
When he reaches the beach he hopes that the terror provoked by the dunes will subside, but it hangs on and follows him down the beach like a piece of the clotted black clouds, crackling and hissing a few feet above his head. Pot hangover, he insists. Nothing else. Just get the old mind elsewhere. Come now, man, you can ignore a little old pot hangover . . .
To while away the wait I sailed rocks at the droves of sandpipers that stood motionless at the edge of the water, beaks to the wind like little weathervanes each mounted on one thin spike. I dug after the little pink-shelled sandcrabs and tossed them to the careening gulls. I rolled over humps of beach kelp and watched the blizzard of insect life that resulted. I ran full tilt along the foamed edge of the waves for as far as my poor tar-infested lungs would carry me; I engaged in frantic screaming matches with the gulls; I rolled up my cuffs and tied my shoes to my belt and splashed in the surf until my ankles became swollen and numb . . .
but every word he sings, every jump and gesture, seems to be an act making up a ritual for conjuring some fierce fiend out of the earth, a ritual he can’t stop because every act calculated to stem its onrush to success turns out to be another part of some subconscious ceremony necessary to that success. As he comes closer and closer to the climax of this oceanside sacrament, it occurs to him that all his wild maneuvering might be re-enactments of childhood frolic: No wonder I’m getting the psychological jitters; why the deuce not? I’m sprinting hell-bent backwards. I’m taking a running jump at the womb. That’s all it is. Along with pot hangover. That’s all (Gradually, as the shock of the fall subsided, the little boy tried to move. He looked directly above him and found that he could perceive the passage of
stars through a round hole far above his head, and as the wind shifted to blow from the rocky cliffs to the north at Wakonda Head, he found he could hear the angry pawbeats of an ocean frustrated at being cheated of a rightful prize by a hole in the ground) and all I need to do to overcome it is find something of this tune to associate with. He looks about the tuneless beach frantically . . .
and just then my eye happened to fall on a first-rate distraction: a car stuck in the seaside sand a quarter-mile south of me, down the beach, almost to the big breakwater jetty where I was due to meet Viv. And there was something very familiar about the molding and primer job on the car, familiar indeed; a first-rate way to pass the time, if I am correct. (
The boy lay at the bottom of a huge tube. A tube down into the earth. One of the chimneys of Hell! the boy thought, recalling old Henry’s warning about devil’s stovepipes out on the dunes where unwary wanderers might fall. Clear to Hell! the boy remembered and began to cry.
)
So I rolled down the pants legs and replaced the shoes and hurried down the beach. I was right, it was the carload of samaritans. My old friend the driver stood smoking calmly in complete disregard of the beseeching and baleful look of his sandlocked car, which stood trapped and helpless in the waves. He sighed at my approach. A cigarette package was rolled in the sleeve of his Dayglo pullover and his hands were thrust in the back pockets of his Levis. The skidding tracks along the beach told the story: they had driven to the Coast Guard station and down onto the beach, high on root beer and ripe for action. They had squirreled closer and closer to the ocean, taunting the tide, daring the waves, kicking sand in its gleaming teeth as though it were a ninety-eight-pound weakling. And had been caught. Planks and branches evidenced futile and frantic at-temps to free the wheels. But no soap, the sand held fast. Now the tide was turned and it was the ocean’s turn to tease closer and closer with excruciating patience. Footprints led up the beach, running for help, but unless that help arrived in the next few minutes it would be too late. Each snickering slap of water sank the right side of the car deeper into the sand. In five more minutes the foam would be chuckling against the differential.
In ten, laughing against the door. In half an hour the waves would be roaring with triumph over the motorblock, into the wiring with the corrosive salt, ripping zebra-skin upholstery, breaking windows, and rolling the fuzzy dice hanging from the rear-view mirror. And in an hour would be rolling the whole car like a bathtub toy.
The car’s passive acceptance of its fate touches Lee. The stoic wisdom of metal. He wishes he could be as calm (The wind gathered on the dunes. It blew over the tube with an intermittent wailing, a phantom pipe played by the wind and tempoed by the beat of a surf somewhere in another world. The boy stopped crying; he decided this couldn’t be one of the devil’s stovepipes; it was too cold to be part of Hell)—as calm and as accepting: wheels caught in a waiting grave, and with the moon full to boot. . . . He walks directly to the car . . .
The driver eyed my approach but didn’t speak. “Hey, man,” I called, “what’s the bubble?”
Say trouble, Lee implores the boy silently.
“What’s the clatter?”
Please say matter, Lee begs as longingly as the doomed car, please say something friendly.
I stopped walking. His cronies, standing ten yards back up the beach in the midst of a collection of trunk paraphernalia—jack, spare tire, blankets, golf clubs—looked slowly from me to their leader.
“Mr. Stamper,” he purred when a little space opened in the ocean’s roar. “You arrive just like a hero. All you Stampers are heroes, they say. So, hey, you bring along a shovel? A chain maybe? Maybe you called us a tow truck. You call us a tow truck by any chance, Mr. Stamper? Or you got help on the way?”
“Nope. Just strolling past, enjoying the beach all alone.”
Alarmed by his sugar-and-venom tone, I quickly realized that this scene might constitute more of a distraction than I had bargained for. “Well, blue-tail fly,” I said cheerily and tried to walk on past.
Lee stands, looking beyond the kid’s Dayglo shoulder in the direction of the whistle buoy calling plaintively out in the dark water (The little boy could occasionally hear the buoys out in the bay’s mouth, and sometimes the sound of Diesels going past on the highway . . . but as time passed he came to devote all his attention to the star-dotted coin of sky above him: it seemed to be growing lighter near one edge . . .)
But as I passed him he reached out and laid a freckled hand on my arm to stop me, keeping his face turned slightly away; brilliant stigmata of white-heads decorated his rosy cheek. When he spoke I noticed a decided change in his attitude since our earlier encounter. There had been cruelty, but now something had turned it to hate.
“Gee, Mr. Stamper. Where you going? Didn’t we give you a hand in need a while back? Don’t you suppose you might help us?”
“Sure”—brightly, cheerfully. “Sure, what can I do? Should I phone for a truck? I’m going toward civilization. . . .” I gestured vaguely toward town. “I’ll send someone.”
“Oh well I jes’ guess not,” Dayglo crooned. “We already sent somebody to telephone. Can’t you help some
other
way? You being a Stamper and all?” His fingers tenderly rolled the fabric of my jacket. “Sure,” I exclaimed. “Sure, I’ll do what I can but—” Too bright now, too cheerful. I laughed nervously, and the fingers tightened on my arm.
“You sure happy about something, Mr. Stamper. What is it you so happy about?”
I shrugged, knowing by this time that any answer I gave would doubtless be the wrong one . . .
A cluster of sandbirds flickers past Lee’s head like leaves in a whirlwind; he watches them with remote interest as they wheel in a sharp turn and settle all together at the edge of the waves a few yards from the car. They go immediately to work as soon as they all light.
(
Yes! the boy exclaims. Light! He was positive of it now . . . way up through the tube, right over at that one edge of his little spot of sky: light! a Heavenly light! dimming out his allotment of stars as it moved ever so slowly through the sky. . . . A light was coming and was going to stop directly above his hole, just for him! “Help me, O Heavenly Father, O God. You can do it, I know You can. Help me . . .”
) So I vowed to keep quiet, but that little nervous giggle escaped from me again.
“Oh boy, Mr. Stamper here is got a good sense
humor
, seein’ our car in this fix!” And I felt the hand grow even tighter on my arm. . . .
Almost oblivious now to the hand, Lee watches the little birds work the runneling beach: How their poor bonded
lives are written for them . . . everlastingly tuned to the pitiless sea, immutably timed to the measured echo of the waves.
“An’, y’know, guys, the way I see it, a fellow like Mr. Stamper with such a good sense humor about our fix he should be able to help us
outen
it, I see it that way.”
I didn’t see it at all that way, but I didn’t voice my dissension. I half turned to gauge the distance to the jetty, but the driver’s gum-cracking henchmen read my look and shuffled over to cut off any attempt at a sudden break, and I began to feel properly trapped (
At the bottom of the hole the boy’s eyes burned from long minutes without blinking. His numbed legs had collapsed unnoticed beneath him and his crumpled skull mask dangled from his neck like an amulet. The aching cold in his fingers was forgotten as he watched the light in the sky overhead move closer to his restricted line of vision. “I’m ready, Father in Heaven. O please. Come take me. I don’t want to die in this old hole. I don’t want to go home ever again. Just come and take me with you, O God . . .
”) and
also
for the first time properly afraid; I’d heard tales of these beach hooligans and their ideas of sport. . . .
Lee shakes his arm free of the driver’s grip and moves a few steps closer to the sea. He feels tired, almost sleepy. He looks for the daytime moon but the clouds have blown across it. He looks back at the busy detail of birds working the dangerous surf; their hectic pecking and hunting makes him more tired than ever . . .
“Gosh, I mean, you’re a Stamper, Mr. Stamper; a Stamper oughta be able to help us out.” . . .
He sees the birds as slaves, slaves to the rocking waves.
“I mean, now say, for instance
Hank
Stamper, I bet he could just put a big strong shoulder agin our car and push it out with one heave.”
Slaves, birds in bondage to the waves. Run run run down the beach right at the edge of the receding wave peckety peckety peckety after sand fleas turn around run run run back before the next wave rolls salty death over you . . . over and over and over. (The little boy prayed fervently in his constricting dark, as the wind blew a hymn over the top of the hole, and the light came closer, brighter . . .)
“An’ if Hank could do it I bet you could do it too, hey? So let’s see you put a shoulder an’ try. Come on, hey?”
I saw there was nothing to do but humor my tormentors and hope that they would grow tired of the game; so I rolled my pants legs another roll and walked around to the seaward side of the car. The water was like cold knives against my ankles. I put my shoulder against the rear fender and made as though I were shoving. . . .
Slaves to the waves; pause too long pecking out a morsel from the running sand and WATCH OUT all the others turn run run run back except one careless bird, and when the wave rolls back a gray-speckled dot kicks desperately to free its wing from the sand before the next wave run run run up turn run run run back (“O Father in Heaven I see you comin’ I’m waitin’ I’m waitin’!”) turn run run run . . .
“You gonna have to do better than that, Mr. Stamper; Hank Stamper’d be downright ashamed, you goin’ at it so puny an’ the water getting so high.” . . .
One of the other birds comes across the drowned wad of feathers and pauses for a fraction of a second before running on in his eternal game with the waves; can’t stop! no time to mourn! sand feas or starve! No time, no time! (The light brightened. The boy could see one edge of it, like the tip of a great glowing finger crooking to him from the sky!)
“Mr. Stamper, I don’ even think you’re tryin’. We’ll have to help you out.” I felt the icy rasp of salt water scrape my throat, and the first choking of panic. “C’mon, you can try!” . . .
He feels tiredness creeping up his bones like the cold; he tosses his head and spits a mouthful of water. The birds, why do they do it? He thinks of the Darlingtonia he picked earlier. They aren’t like the birds, they can afford the luxury of patience. They can wait. And if one doesn’t attract his quota of flies and starves, it is only the dropping of a leaf. The plant still lives, the roots still live. Bur that little bird was just one and when he drowned, that was it, that was all of him, the one little bird. He lost. The wave wins, the bird loses.