1993
LIAM POWERS
Across the fields of shallow grass a person with long hair could be seen running. There was nothing more than this, and the wind. Her bare feet kicked up the dust.
She left the field’s perimeter and entered the woods, where the shade covered everything. Her breath pulled in and out as she ran. The beer cans were on the ground up ahead. She snatched them up and stuffed them into their soggy cardboard box, colors bleeding into one another, and all of it went into a black trash bag she’d withdrawn from her cargo-pants pocket. Then she turned around and ran back to the house.
At the house, her mother, father, and brother sat at a picnic table snacking on olives and crackers. She waved them down as she reentered the yard with her black trash bag. She said something vague about a “net” she’d left out in the rain and had to fetch, and then went inside the house. In the kitchen it was cool and dark, and the cook was there facing the stove with the radio playing Latin American music as usual. When the cook needed to move, she was precise and quick. She snatched a garlic clove and pressed down on it with the flat of her knife.
The girl left the kitchen now and went into the living room, which had walls and floor of lighter color than the kitchen and more light from outside. Above the mantle was a landscape painting of somewhere in Southern Spain. She went up the stairs now, narrow and tight, with the trash bag dragging against the long wall, uneven and topographic with many years and layers of white paint. She set the trash bag down in her room now and lay on the bed.
She could smell the old beer smell from the bag. She opened a book on her bedside table, some book of philosophy by a German writer, flipped through it and quickly became bored. She put a record on by The Replacements and lit some incense. In the mirror she could see the edge of her torso and legs but not her head.
•
C was twenty-two. She woke up and the record was still spinning. Her eyes were heavy now and she put her palms on them and pressed down. She sifted through a pile of clothes to put an outfit together. A light green t-shirt and white shorts and sandals. She walked down the driveway in her sandals and the gravel became larger in the areas where they had just had it redone.
At the general store was her friend Sadie, whose round face was pointed completely at a customer, an old man buying candles. Sadie said a number, a price, and the old man reached for his wallet. C stood in the corner and absentmindedly touched a few wooden carved items, inspected the prices and grimaced at them.
When the customer was gone, she spoke.
“How’s it?”
“Hungover.”
“Me too. When do you get off?”
“Twenty-five.”
They left the store twenty-five minutes later and went to Sadie’s car, a red Volvo. The tilting of the car as it moved from parking lot to country road reminded C of her nausea, which she’d mostly forgotten about. Then they went off down the road and switched on the radio.
“What did you do today?” asked Sadie.
“I talked to my dad about grad school this morning.”
“What are you doing again? for grad school.”
“History,” C said.
“That’s cool.”
“Environmental history. That’s what he wants me to do.”
“My dad wants me to go to law school, but I don’t want to.”
“Let’s go to the beach.”
They turned down a bumpy dirt road and rode it until the rocks turned to shallow layer of sand and they were in a parking lot. They parked there, got out, and walked away from the low-hanging sun in the sky.
“Your car smells,” said Sadie.
“Someone keeps leaving his gym clothes.”
“No, it smells like something else. It’s more unique than gym clothes.” She coughed into the sky. “You should patent it and sell it in a bottle.”
“We could sell it to the military.”
The beach was empty except for a single figure laying down on a towel close to the water. As they drew closer they could see it was an older man playing scales on a trumpet. Sadie and C stood and watched him. Long furrows ran across his tan face like on an old, dry fruit. He raised his horn a little in greeting, like a tip of the hat. He started playing a tune, something familiar but old.
“I love it,” said C as they passed him by.
He scrunched his brow and crossed his eyes as he rested on a high note. The girls went to the edge of water, which washed in and out over a field of stones. Sadie picked up a rock and skipped it, jumping three times before disappearing into a wave.
“Girl who says she loves it,” he said, “do you know this one?” He played another tune, this one slow and mournful. She listened quietly. “He wrote it for a pretty girl,” he said. His voice was rough but charming, like an old brick oven.
“Who wrote it?” C asked.
“Thelonious Monk.”
“Do you come here a lot?”
“Once a week.” He licked his lips and wiped the mouthpiece of the trumpet. “My father used to bring me here when I was a boy. We would skip stones just like your friend over there.”
“Mhm,” said C. She put her hands on her hips. “That’s a coincidence.”
“Not really a coincidence at all. Everyone likes these stones for skipping. They see them and right away they want to skip them.” He paused and stared out at the rocks with a faraway look. “He worked in a factory, my father. Many hours, hard work too.” He paused again. “Skipping stones is hard work. You get that thing in your upper arm, that little ache, after a while skipping. You ever get that?”
“Not really.”
“He used to love the beach, my father.”
“What did he do at the factory?” C asked.
“He made fabrics. Fabrics for American flags. He spent his days making American flags over in Plymouth. Used to drive all the way to Plymouth for work. He always had scrapes on the backs of his hands for some reason.”
“That’s awful.”
“What do you do for work?” he asked.
“I’m unemployed. Applying to graduate school.”
“A scholar, eh!”
“Hardly.”
“What will you study?”
“History,” she said flatly.
“Tell me something about history!”
“George Washington used to grow hemp on his plantation.”
The man’s eyebrows shot up in a flash and he suddenly went flat on the sand and put his trumpet up to his lips. He began playing the Star-Spangled Banner slowly and mournfully. Sadie came back over and stood next to C and they listened to the tune together, swaying a little with their arms on each other’s shoulders.
The man finished his song. “I’m starting to see my father in the sky,” he said a moment later. “Do you see that face, that warm bearded face?” C and Sadie squinted up at the sky and searched in vain. Only random wisps and tendrils of white.
“His lips! do you see those full, wet lips. I can just see him moving his lips now. What’s he saying?” He lifted his head up and craned his neck, his eyes widening as he saw something that C and Sadie could not. “Massive lips,” he said and then started mumbling and closed his mouth tight and pulled at his hair. He shot up and stood in front of them, sand all over his blue shirt. “Now! Into the water!” He sprinted in a low, crouching sprint and dove headfirst into a wave with all of his clothes on.
C and Sadie looked at each other for a moment and held back smiles. Then they followed him and ran with all of their clothes into the water.
“Daddy-O! Was a wild one!” he sang, “Flew himself! Right at the sun!”
C and Sadie held onto each other. The distant horizon, which held a handful of boats, appeared and disappeared behind each surging wave.
“Say,” he said, lowering his voice and looking at them. “The ocean is pretty warm today.” He floated up and over a wave, which began to break white against his upper back, shouting he went over, “I might take off some clothes! If you care to join.”
“I’ll pass!” shouted Sadie back over the crashing waves.
“We’ll pass,” said C, a little quieter.
“Suit yourself,” he said. He went underwater, and when he emerged he had his pants and underwear in his hand. His shirt was still on. “Suit yourself! Oh man!” He held his underwear and pants up in the air. “I come in peace.”
C started to push with her hands and back up in the water.
“You gettin’ out?” he said. “Listen! I’ll tell you a secret.”
They backed up more.
“My dad was a Kennedy.” His voice began to crack. “Which makes me one too! I’m a Kennedy. Don’t you understand what that means?”
They were nearly out of the water and he called out to them.
“I’m a Kennedy. I’m one of the last ones! My father told me about how they killed us all off. The whole thing’s a hoax. He told me about it. The government, the stock market, everything. It’s all a hoax. Everything was designed by them.”
He had a piece of seaweed on his chest, which he removed and let fall into the water.
“They’re the ones with the fake flesh and fake blood. But my family, we’re like the Kings of America. We have the real flesh, and they’re killing us off.”
The girls were on the sand now, a safe distance away.
“Now it’s just me,” he said.
They stood there on the beach. The wind whipped their hair in gusts. He’d made his way to the edge of the water and had started to put his underwear and pants back on, his body pummeled by waves in the process. No one spoke as he struggled to assume his wet garments. He stood up in the rushing foam, his fingertips trembling in it.
“I’m one of the last ones, the last real Americans.” His hand reached down into his pants to his crotch and moved it around.
•
In the car on the way home, the girls listened to the radio and said nothing. They drove to a bar where they each had a beer and spoke no more of grad school. The young bartender said he was from Croatia, where the sea was light and clear but there was a war and no money. They gazed into the glowing jukebox and the orange glass reflected their faces in the spiraling light.