Chapter 7
I owned a beat-up car and had about fifty dollars cash on hand. I tossed a suitcase into the heap and hit the road. My plans were indefinite-but something magnetic was drawing me toward the coast. Back to my past-and my cousin Nell? I was not sure but I found myself driving south.
The direction seemed the most natural. I wondered why it had taken me so long to go back. Then I remembered that this was the first summer I had been independent enough of my family to do as I pleased.
The drive took two days, pressing hard. I slept overnight in the car. By the second afternoon I had covered eleven hundred miles and came to the familiar scattering of frame houses. The early June sun bounced off white shell streets and dug at my eyes.
I put on sunglasses, drove slowly down the main street. The town was less to look at than I remembered. It was small and dusty. The buildings along its principal street were drab, one-storied, many with false fronts. I passed a hardware store, a couple of dime stores, some chain drugstores with modern fronts. The bank on the main corner had been remodeled and looked out of place with its glass and chrome design.
I stopped at a filling station. I put a coin in the cold drink machine. The wet bottle slid into my hand. I thought it was probably the coolest thing in town.
A kid filled my tank. The old guy who ran the station sat on a box, his back against one of the gasoline pumps. He looked bored and lonesome.
"Don't look like we're ever going to get any rain," he complained. "Does it?"
"Nope."
He looked as if he hoped I would help him pass the time of day.
"Didn't see any showers where you came from, did you?"
I finished my drink and dropped the empty bottle into the rack beside the machine. "Nope," I said.
He shook his head. "I guess it's just forgot how to rain."
I got into my car and turned down the road that led to the harbor. The sun hammered angrily down at me. Some dusty mesquite trees beside the road drooped. Sweat glued my shirt to the seat cushion.
I drove to the top of the levee, pulled up and gazed down at the harbor. It seemed unchanged.
Shrimp boats were still tied up at the unloading dock. Others were sailing out through the channel. The place had neither grown nor shrunk. It was exactly what it had been five years ago.
Or so I told myself. I looked hard for confirmation.
Even the signs on the tin sheds around the semicircle of the docks were the same. harry's place-cold beer we buy and sell shrimp fisherman's supply company mac's place-beer net shop gulf coast ice company eddie's fine foods-beer sammy's diesel service.
The good waterfront smells of tar and rope and salt brine mingled with fish reached my nostrils. I enjoyed it, even the odor of dead shrimp.
And then I knew how the harbor had changed-and why I had looked so hard for no change. The vacuum where Uncle Enoch's shrimp boat had been sucked at my thoughts. Uncle Enoch had been caught in a sudden squall two winters ago and had been washed off the deck of his boat and drowned. My father had said Uncle Enoch had probably been drunk when he fell overboard. Was there a virtue in dying cold sober?
I seemed to hear Uncle Enoch's voice floating on the sea breeze.
Hi, mate....
The winter he had died I had gone off by myself and bawled. Now his absence was more than a vacancy-it was a total emptiness that pulled at my mind. I remembered him at the helm of his shrimp boat, his white hair a halo, his eyes slightly out of focus from booze.
I drove down from the levee, took the road around the harbor and up the shell street that led to Uncle Enoch's house. My Aunt Bertha was still living there, I knew, with the young Phillips kids.
The yard was as full of weeds as ever. The old cabin cruiser was just where Uncle Enoch had left it. I saw that he had never gotten around to patching the hole in the prow. I parked my jalopy in front of the house and walked through the weeds to the front porch. I could hear kids yelling in the back yard. The television was loud in the house. I grinned. Uncle Enoch's death had changed less here than it had in the harbor. The realization gave me a warm, homey feeling.
I banged on the screen door. But the television was making so much noise Aunt Bertha would hardly have heard the front porch fall down. I opened the front door, stuck my head in and yelled at her. She came out of the kitchen with a steaming pot in one hand.
She failed to recognize me. I opened the door wider and walked in.
"It's Mark, Aunt Bertha. Don't you remember me?"
"Land sakes alive! But you're suppose to be a little boy-" she smiled accusingly. Next she gave me a hug, getting flour all over me. We sat on the couch, Aunt Bertha clutching the warm pot. She wanted to know all about my family. We had to talk at the top of our voices to be heard above the television.
Aunt Bertha had changed more than the house. She had aged, become frail and even more brown. Her skin had turned into wrinkled leather.
I brought her up to date on news of the family. Debbie was engaged to be married this fall to a young aircraft designer. Gordon had become manager of one of my father's chemical plants. I said nothing about my latest row with my father. That was too personal.
I was itching to ask her about Nell but was unable to find words. Maybe I was afraid of what I might learn.
Aunt Bertha insisted I stay for supper. I washed up in the bathroom and in a little while sat at the table with her and the family. I had to get acquainted all over again with my cousins, who regarded me with suspicion and reserve.
We were halfway through supper when the front screen door twanged. High heels tapped through the living room.
"Mom, I brought you the drapery material you wanted," Nell said.
Her voice broke off. She froze in the doorway. We stared at each other.
Five years disappeared for me like a puff of smoke. I knew what had been bugging me all this time. I was still in love with my beautiful red-haired cousin. It was as simple as that. Or maybe not simple at all. Love should last out of sight. Perhaps what I felt owed something to the confusion and surprise and joy in Nell's eyes.
"Nell, you remember your cousin, Mark, don't you?" Aunt Bertha said. "He came down for the summer when your aunt and uncle owned the cottage here on the beach. You and Mark played together-remember?"
Nell put her package on a chair.
"Mother, don't be silly. Of course I remember." Her gaze was tangled with mine. "How are you, Mark?"
She came toward me and our fingers touched and clung. I felt a warmth race up my arm.
Aunt Bertha was prattling on and Nell's young brothers and sisters were talking among themselves and to Nell. Nell and I kept looking at each other in all the confusion.
Later we went into the living room and tried to talk. Nell sat in an easy chair and crossed long, sleek legs. Most of my memories of her had her in bathing suits or shorts. Now she wore a sleeveless, white summer frock that looked both simple and expensive. Her legs were bare but her shoes were money.
She saw me looking at them as we talked. She smiled, kicked them off and dug her toes into the rug.
Her beauty had bloomed. Her hair was no longer in a ponytail but it still sparkled with glints of copper and gold and her skin was still as flawless as fresh cream.
We talked about what had happened to us since the last time we had seen each other. I gave her my news about the family, again leaving out my own unpleasant difficulties. She was mainly interested in hearing about Debbie's forthcoming marriage.
"I was sent a wedding announcement," she said. "I'm all excited. I always thought a lot of Debbie. It's too bad we stopped writing." Then she asked, "How long are you going to be here, Mark?"
"I don't know," I admitted. "I'm just knocking around this summer. I drove down here on an impulse. I might stay and work on a shrimp boat for a while."
She said impulsively, "I want you to see my home. Can you come over now?"
"I guess so."
"You can sleep here tonight, Mark," Aunt Bertha said. "I'm not going to have you staying in a motel when we have plenty of room. You can have Nell's old room."
I remembered the afternoon Nell's boy friend, Paul, had caught us in bed in that room. I glanced at Nell and I caught a look of amusement in her eyes. Pinkness touched her cheeks and I thought she was probably remembering the same incident.
Nell and I left the house together. Dusk had fallen. The last streamers of sunset lashed across the purple sky. The rotting cabin cruiser was a dark blob among the weeds. Nell led the way to a Cadillac convertible parked before the house.
I got in, glanced around at the chrome and leather.
"Well, you said one day you'd own a Cadillac."
She shrugged, turned her face away. She started the big car, backed, turned, then drove at a fast clip. She followed the shell road along the foot of the levee until we arrived at a section of expensive waterfront homes. Most had private marinas and boat sheds. The homes, none of them worth less than forty thousand, were mainly redwood and brick.
Nell pulled into the driveway of one of the biggest on the street. Obviously Fred Turner was still the big man in town.
Nell slid out of the car, flashing lovely legs. She came around and we walked up the flagstone path together. Her fingers slipped into mine in the growing darkness. For me to be holding her hand seemed completely natural.
She opened a sliding glass panel, touched a switch. Soft, indirect lighting flooded the main room of the large house. I saw a beamed ceiling, mahogany paneling, and a great open fireplace of cut stone. Mounted above the fireplace was a giant blue and silver tarpon.
Nell saw me looking at it.
She said, "Fred caught it last year."
"It's a big house," I said. "No family yet?"
"No. Fred doesn't want me to have children because it would spoil my figure."
She tried to laugh. The happy note failed to come off. She flushed and turned away.
A sick feeling crawled around in my stomach.
She led the way through the house to the den. The entire south wall was plate glass overlooking a patio enclosed by a redwood fence. Thick grass carpeted the patio. Floodlights glowed on native mesquite and retama.
Nell's husband, Fred Turner, was stretched out comfortably in a redwood patio chair, sipping out of a tall glass. Nell and I went out.
Turner was heavier than I remembered. The florid fines of his face had settled into what I suspected was a perpetual scowl. He regarded me heavily, suspiciously.
Nell bent down to kiss him.
"Fred, this is my cousin, Mark Harris. Remember when he visited here in the summer with his family?" Fred looked at me morosely.
"Oh, yeah. You were a skinny little kid last time I saw you. How ya' doin'?"
He obviously resented the effort of pushing himself up from the chair to touch my hand perfunctorily.
He said to Nell, "Where you been? I got home-nobody was here."
"I drove to the mainland to do some shopping. The traffic slowed me down or I would have been home sooner. I'll fix you a snack right away."
He grunted.
It was obvious to me that Nell was afraid of him. She hurried away. I had a drink with Fred on the patio. I sensed that we despised each other equally. But we went through the motions of civility.
Later I watched Nell waiting on him hand and foot and my insides crawled with anger. I made futile efforts to picture Nell sleeping with this gross, sullen man.
The situation was painful for all of us. I endured the visit as long as I could for Nell's sake. She was so obviously and pathetically proud of her home and wanted me to see it-wanted me to know that she was no longer poor. But I thought she had paid too big a price for what she had gotten. I wished she still just owned a few pairs of blue jeans and a bicycle-and had not married this Pig-
I took the first opening to announce that I was tired from my trip. I asked Nell to run me back to her mother's.
We said little to each other in the car. I leaned back and let the cool night air blow the stink of Fred Turner from me.
Nell pulled off the road into the shadows in front of her mother's home and turned off the ignition. We sat for a moment in the darkness. The night was silent except for the night breeze rustling through the weeds and a dog barking somewhere.
"Nell," I said. "I still care for you-I guess more than you know."
"Hush, Mark." She sounded frightened. "You mustn't say things like that."
"How do you feel, Nell?" Her voice trembled slightly.
"You'll always be my best boy friend, just as you always were."
"Just as always?"
"You know what I mean. I'm married now, Mark."
"Will that make a difference?"
"Of-of course," she whispered, unsteadily.
"You don't love him, Nell."
"Mark, please, I-"
"You couldn't be in love with him. It's impossible." She reached for the ignition. "Mark, it's late and-"
"You're scared of him." I sighed heavily, staring at her through the darkness. "Why did you marry him?" She said nothing for a moment.
Then: "You know better than to ask that. You know how poor my people have always been. You've never been poor. You don't know what it's like. One reason I liked being around Debbie so much was to see her pretty clothes, your home-" Her voice faltered again. Then: "Please, Mark, I do have to go home right away or he'll give me a bad time."
I opened the car door and got out. I walked slowly through the front gate of Aunt Bertha's yard. I heard Nell start the car. Then she switched off the engine. The door slammed. I heard her high heels stumbling toward me, scraping on the shell.
I turned. She was in my arms. Our mouths locked. Our bodies strained together. She was crying. Tears ran down her cheeks to the corner of my mouth. She held me tightly, cried and kissed me. I felt her trembling.
She looked at me through her tears.
"Mark," she whispered, "I'm glad you've come back."
I had come back. That was what it really amounted to-back to a summer of my youth, back to a time and to a girl who had altered my entire life. How could anything ever have been the same for me after that summer when Nell had opened the door to life for me?
Whatever had been bugging me, chewing at me, giving me no peace, was forgotten in Nell's fervent kisses.
Just as before-Nell took charge of the situation. She drew me down into the weeds with her and her hands searched as skillfully as ever. She laughed softly into my ear.
"You've grown up."
"How about your mother and the kids?"
"The house is dark," she whispered. "They're all in bed. They won't see us out here. But we don't have much time, honey."
She was still ahead of me. Why was she realer to me than Alice and the several others who had served me? Because she was older-more expert?
We were hidden by the weeds and the night, exploring one another until I felt Nell's familiar nakedness press against me.
"Mark, have you been with other girls since I saw you?"
I answered with a muffled sound.
"You're a bad boy," she whispered. Her chuckle was low, throaty. "Were you in love with any of them?"
"I never loved anybody but you, Nell."
"You're sweet, Mark. Gee, I'd honestly forgotten about how sweet-I love you, too."
Then neither of us could speak. Our breathing and the rustle of our bodies in the weeds were the only sounds we made. The earth spun in our private orbit. This was total sensation. I felt I was plumbing emotions to their ultimate depth.
Flame leaped, died in creation's flooding.
Then I was looking up at the stars. They did not seem far away at all.