SHASTA IN THE WIND Kyle Kimberlin Western wind, when wilt thou blow? The small rain down can rain. - Anonymous Walter Dent, newspaper under his arm, stepped carefully over the slippery railroad tracks and down the gravel embankment, through an opening in a great hedge of ivy and bougainvillea. He passed through a quiet spot beside the tracks, from where his ears were shielded by a hill from sounds of surf and seabirds. The Amtrak was still hours to the south, leaving San Diego. It would reach the little town of Tar Harbor after Walter passed away. Now he paused on the siding and listened, his old, scuffed loafers silent on the rocks. He waited until he believed he could hear his heart beating, then went on. The path led through stands of eucalyptus and across a field of oat grass and fennel, to the bluffs from which a row of Monterey cypress watched the beach. Walter never crossed those tracks, and he crossed them frequently, without wondering what his heart and brain would do if his foot got stuck. Just panic at first, he thought; stuck and with the train bearing down. Then God would help his mind relax, so that the impact would come as in a dream. But it would come: God is not cruel, but leaves man to the consequences of his acts, more times than not. Reality: such was Walter's take on the Will of God. He wouldn't have it any other way; he loved crossing the tracks, sometimes standing a moment, looking up and down: confronting a power greater than himself. Ahab trimming the Pequod's sails to come about, head to head with Moby Dick. Walter read the Chronicle though he didn't care about the news. He dreamed of winning millions in the lottery but never bought a ticket; always voted Democratic, though he didn't care who won. He wore polyester slacks as he sat in the sun, and spent his evenings watching old movies. It had rained all morning and early afternoon, clearing by three o'clock. So on this his last full day of life, Walter sat on a bench overlooking the surf, reading the poems of Roethke. After a while he got tired, and watched the coming and going of the waves, thought about how little they seemed to bring to him, how much they took away, how little he cared. Driving home, he thought about Karen, as he often did. Walter Dent, age 48, retired from Pacific Bank on disability, a week after the death of his beloved old dog. Just weeks after the deaths of his parents, in an auto accident back home in Minnesota. His father's Lincoln was crushed by a truck full of major appliances. Walter returned from the funeral in St. Paul thinking he had all the grief he could handle; and this was true for several days, until he had to put his dog to sleep. It was just old age, but in Walter's mind the bank was to blame for death in general. Two days after Shasta died, sitting in his office and staring into middle space, he lost it all. Smashed his monitor against the wall, then up went the keyboard and his chair, and finally Walter's fragile head. He woke up that night in the psycho ward of the hospital, thinking, Oh God, Mom and Dad will be so upset; and then, Who's taking care of the dog? Three years passed in solitude, reading books with his eyes and his mind rarely focused, watching old movies he had seen a hundred times. It didn't matter. Time was passing, and that was good. From Casa Blanca, he learned the hero doesn't always get the girl, that all he had been through didn't amount to a hill of beans. So nearing home on the night he died he stopped at Taco Bell. He hated the place: called it Taco Hell. Hated the food that gave him gas, the yellow walls and the nose picking children at the registers. But he thought whatever, tossed the brown and red sack into the back seat of his car. Walter ate his last meal watching The Quiet Man. Along the streets of the town of Tar Harbor, the lights came on and the cats came out as Walter slowly cleaned his teeth. After dark, a breeze came up off the Pacific, ringing the windchimes that hung in his little patio. This was one of his few consolations, since the church closed down. Walter missed the church. But it was now a bookstore/ coffeehouse. They still burned lots of incense, so he would go there sometimes and sit, watching the light gray smoke rise to the ceiling carved and painted blue and touched in better times by cherubim. It was still a church when Walter met Karen there. She had just moved to town from Monterey, widow of a dentist. Karen told Walter about it once: astrocytoma. She told how a starfish of cancer moved through her husband's brain, turning out the lights. First went motor skills, then vision, swallow reflex, and finally respiration. She told how he wanted to die at home, so she sat on the edge of a hospital bed in their converted dining room. She wept and listened as his last breath came slowly and long into the room, like a complicated question about life. Walter listened, so they were friends for ten years, and not a touch passed between them more than a hug. In the months before Walter's death, Karen stopped returning his calls. She was dating a surgeon, was into skiing, off at Tahoe on weekends. Poetry never saved anyone from anything, but after he ate his tacos, Walter went to "church." He drank coffee and read a book on Robert Frost with New England photos. Then he felt the first tightness spread across his chest, arise from his left armpit, coming slowly like a night blooming cactus, fulfilling itself in the right jawbone and ear. Stands of white birches filtering sunrise. He put his hand over his mouth and burped; after a while, the pressure passed. Standing in a barnyard, an ancient hand plow gone to rust. He got up and left, taking a last glance to the counter, at the college girl who was making cappuccino. He forgot about the pain. It was raining again. The stereo in the car was broken, so Walter could hear his wipers swish and click. He loved that sound since childhood, so he leaned forward and put his forearms on the top of the front seat, with his head between those of his parents. He could smell his father's aftershave. Their voices were muffled and soft with the wipers and the throb of the engine and hum of the wheels. Walter's knees were on the driveshaft hump, which was warm. He would ride like this until almost asleep, squinting his eyes so his lashes turned the coming headlights into magic spears. Then he would stretch out across the big back seat and sleep. Back in his singlewide mobile home, Walter turned on his IBM, listened patiently for "Welcome, You've Got Mail." He deleted the items of spam, credit offers, daily stock market news, then turned to see Karen appear in the space between his bookshelves the eastern corner of the room. Her brown hair was down, green eyes focused in the indifferent air surrounding Walter's head. "Hi, I'm not here right now, but if you leave a message I'll call you back," Karen said, and added, "I hope you're having a great day." "You never called me back," Walter answered. "Karen, why couldn't you care about me?" "Hi, I'm not here right now, but if you leave a message I'll call you back. I hope you're having a great day." Karen turned and walked into the bookshelves. Fading away she told Walter, "I promise we'll always be friends. You're very special. Someday you'll find…." Now it came in earnest, jumping from his heart to his left jaw and down his left arm with the savage clarity of fire. He fell to the floor on his right side, rolled onto his back and threw both arms across his chest, flipped onto his stomach, dug his face into the carpet and let out a strangled laugh. With what remained of his thinking, he decided this was perfect, it was right. He wanted this, wanted to go and he was seeing Karen's face. Saw her as she was that night at Andiamo Restaurant, eucalyptus trees in the background and the freeway and the sea; saw her throat as she turned her face from him. The most beautiful thing in the world and he lost it again as a ball of light slammed through his mind's eyes as another wave of pain jerked him into unconsciousness. An hour later, Walter awoke in a fetal position on the floor, with a puddle of vomit near his chest. He staggered into the bathroom, ran water to clean his face, let the sink fill with cold rain, and there in the bottom was a sea anemone. All around him he could hear the surf and the birds. The sun was hot on the top of his head, and he was getting sunburned. His mother was calling - something about not going in for an hour after lunch - but Walter was busy with his tidal life; the anemone closing on his index finger as he held his left hand into the dirty aluminum sink. Now the idea came and it was big. He knew where to go to make it real. Into the bedroom, to the drawer with the wadded mass of ties that he wore every day at the bank. Under the ties, behind a rolled electric heating pad, with the little boxes of cufflinks and dead wristwatches, was the whole point of his idea, stuffed in an oily old sock. He took it out and the clip as well. Six rounds, .22 long rifle, hollow point. He held it and turned his head, and the imitation oak paneling of his room became the beach. There was Shasta at the end of his brown leather leash; the sun setting onto the Kuril Islands and Kushiro, far away. Walter looked at his idea, blue steel reflecting nothing in the dim lit room. There was nothing at all but weight in his hands. The sandpipers skittered and poked the sand about his feet and Shasta tugged, and then he heard it: Far at the southern end of Tar Harbor came the Amtrak he was waiting for. The ride he was promised, for which he held the ticket in his hands, and Shasta tugged the other end of it. Walter looked down and saw the air around the dog was going blue and the dog was pulling him into the blue. He felt with his tongue for a place for his big idea to fit; felt lightly as rising smoke the coffered ceiling of despair. By now the train was almost at the city line, its horns sounding plaintively, headlight slicing back and forth in search of … Walter could hear it, feel it in his bones and the sand under his feet was shaking and the birds were gone, dog barking. He found himself outside in the rain, fell to his knees in the cold rain, wept and called futilely for Shasta in the wind and rain. Then when he saw the sun would rise, Walter Dent heard windchimes ringing. © 1999 by Kyle Kimberlin home | e-mail |
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