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She took this as an affirmation and slid her little palm up George's belly and let it drift to his side. He tightened his arm around her bare shoulders and thought, What the hell am I doing out here?
They had been on the cedar deck at the Shiloh, leaning on the railing, staring down at the immense rocks far below, marveling at the anger of the water breaking against the base of the cliff. There was music, dancing; there was an entire world taking place behind them, and they--he, at least--were oblivious.
He'd had the sudden urge to walk, to hit the beach--what beach there was--to drift up the coast the way a sailboat might do, aimlessly sliding this way and that on sloping waves. Down the Oregon shoreline was a lighthouse, and he gravitated to it the way a comet is drawn to the bleak skies of a planet.
George stuffed his free hand into the pocket of his trousers and hunched his shoulders, cold in his thin tuxedo jacket. He could imagine Elaine's discomfort--who in their right mind went out in September in a bare-shouldered gown? But she made no complaint, just walked so close to him that he might as well have slipped an arm beneath her and lifted her into his coat.
###
The night was beautiful, he was sure, but was obscured by a shag carpet of billowing gray and blue clouds, swelling against the faint sky like ink spilled in a fishbowl. It was beginning to rain; he gave his coat to Elaine and felt his slight dress shirt cling to him in the spattering drops.
"Can we go back?" she finally asked, and he stopped.
###
At their backs the thin strains of the three-piece harmonic were slung out on the wind; the lights of the hotel party were faintly visible--torchieres on the railing of the exposed deck, like fireflies on an aircraft carrier landing deck. He glanced in the direction of the party, watched the lights flicker out in the violent wind.
It was growing darker, the skies becoming more fierce.
"I . . ." he started, but Elaine had pulled his jacket tighter around her small breasts, shrugged out of her heels, and begun loping back to the hotel, to the long staircase built into the cliffs.
He watched her, said her name too softly for her to hear, but didn't follow.
What the hell . . .
Somewhere at sea there were lights, bobbing in the blackness, disappearing as the waves grew, reappearing as the water bottomed out. The water, at George's feet, was rushing in harder now, in larger rolls, bursting like jellyfish on his black shoes, rising high about his ankles and sliding back quickly, only to surge back, harder.
The lights on the hotel deck were entirely gone now, and in an electric flash he saw that the deck was empty as well. The dancers, the musicians, the politicians--all inside, pressed against the floor-to-ceiling windows, marveling at the lightning and the storm itself.
And the lightning was marvelous. George forgot about his ankles and watched as the lightning danced along the belly of the clouds, from one to the next, moving like great white snakes one moment, then sliding like fiery water the next. Every so often it seemed that two separate sheets of electricity would collide and spit at the sea, and he couldn't stop staring.
###
It didn't mean anything to her, he knew. To Elaine. For her it was another northwest thunderstorm, a little stronger on the coast than on the mainland. Just another storm. And why should it be more?
But to him--the storm meant something. Just what he wasn't sure, but he felt that the activity above the sea gave meaning to the Pacific once more. Not the rumors of adventure that it had possessed when he was a child, lying on the slippery deck of his father's fishing vessel, captivated by the spray of salt water over his skin, the empty blue void of the afternoon sky. Nothing like that. But danger--he felt it all over, that his old friend had crossed over to the dark side, and it fascinated him.
By now the water was higher, kissing his shins, swallowing his legs, and he finally started moving again, toward the lighthouse. There was nobody manning it tonight; its glass eye was smoky and dark in the blackness. He took long, impatient steps as the water level dropped away, baring the drowning sand, and when it swam back in, he started jumping, leg after leg.
The speed of the tide worried him; the beach ahead was narrow, maybe ten feet of sand between the water at its lowest point and the rugged walls of the cliff face. The way the water was beginning to make his legs buckle when it crashed into him--that was worrying him.
The lighthouse looked pretty far away.
###
"The ocean, you know, is really just one big swimming hole--that's all."
Nathan, George's grandfather, would say this to George on Sunday afternoons, when the guts of the fishing boat were full and they were dragging the final net, preparing to return to port.
"Just one big swimming hole, that's all," he would say, and when George would get disappointed by this--where was the adventure in this?--Nat would say, "But you ever been in a swimming hole crammed to the gills with sharks, or with all kinds of toothy monsters down deep?"
"No," George would answer.
"That's right," Nat would say, a playful gleam in his eye. "And don't you ever forget that, little mister. But don't let it stop you from lovin' her, neither. The ocean . . . man, she be something else. And let me tell you somethin' else," he would say carefully. "Bein' on the ocean on a hard night, during the squalls--let me tell you: it's so beautiful and so terrible that it's like listening to the voice of God."
###
George grunted as the next wave threw him violently against the rocks, and in the blue-gray light that bathed the night, he saw that his white shirt was torn, and soaked in something black. Blood?
He ran now, leaping onto the slippery rocks as the water slammed against them, trying not to get caught. It was as high as his crotch now--high enough to yank him back out with it, then send him right back against the rocks.
Another wave detonated, and he jumped off of the rock and hit the sand again. The waves were coming faster now, and he scrambled up onto another boulder, but the water caught him this time--or his foot slipped--and he fell between two of the large rocks, and the water swallowed him this time, went down his throat, burned at his eyes.
And then it was gone, and he fought to get back onto the rock--and then the water was back, and he was under again, choking. His fingers clawed at the large rocks--was his foot stuck?--no, thank God--and he pulled his head above water as the level receded again.
There was time, barely, to pull himself onto the rock again before the water hit, and he knelt there, clutching the face of the cliff, which was terrifyingly close--if the water should hit him now . . . . He coughed violently, vomiting up the seawater. His insides felt clogged with oil, or seaweed, and the taste of fish was on his gums.
The lighthouse--he looked up. It was so close. There was a dart of lightning, very close, and he studied the water, which foamed and rolled heavily. There was no way he could make it to the lighthouse--was there?
But the water was rising--no way he could stay here. He hoped Elaine had made it back, knowing she had, wishing she had at least pleaded with him to return with her.
###
Had any man ever encountered true fear? Hadn't every man, in any situation in history, looked out at the horizon, at his impending doom, and thought to himself: I can get out of this? Somehow certain that he could?
George swallowed and, as the water ripped back out to sea, he bolted--only twenty yards or so, he thought--and then he looked to his right and saw that the waves were rolling in like freight trains: as each breaking wave moved back out to sea, it collided with the next incoming wave, and the two separate waves crashed in harder than the previous one.
He looked to his right, and then the water was on him, pulling at him, forcing him down, pushing his fists into the sand, dragging him along the bottom until he couldn't feel it. George was choking--no time to take a breath--and his eyes frantically fought at the salty blackness.
There was nothing. Just miles and miles of empty darkness. And he knew: any second now he was going to be belched up to the surface, then churned directly into the rocks . . . the same rocks that had killed his father.
###
It had been a summer night. August, he thought. The Francine Bethany--named after George's grandmother, his father's mother--was out in the bay, nets down, capturing entire schools of tuna, snagging swordfish. George was below decks, his math book open on a bunk bed, ignored.
He was failing, and he had to study even though his father had let him tag along--what choice did he have, really? George's mother was dead, and his grandparents were in Seattle for a weekend. The boat had to go out--money was tight; when wasn't it?--so along came George.
And the storm had hit, coming from nowhere, much like any Oregon coast storm. The night had been clear, the moon high, and then there was no light at all, and the winds were bending the boat nose-down into the waves.
"We're too close, Georgie, too close!" his father had shouted as they ran around the deck, securing the industrial poles that were propped in the sleeves on the sides of the boat. "Too close, we're going to hit!"
George had looked up, seen the faint glimmer of light on the empty air in front of him--and had known: they were right at the shore, that was the cliff right in front of them in the blackness, that was the wet rock flashing in a brief moment of light--and then they hit, and it was as if the world had come apart in a spray of boards and flying metal and oil and fish.
###
He'd made it out then, somehow tossed out far enough, had held on to a panel of wood until the storm dissipated as quickly as it had appeared. But he knew: before the storm, he had a family; now, he had only a fragment of one. He couldn't see his father anywhere, just the husk of the boat lying in the calming swell against the shore.
George's mind recovered this memory in the split second that he was drowning, and then he felt the watery hand lifting him, pushing him, and he was at the surface, and the rocks were so close.
When he hit, it was as if his body were being crushed by a truck. He couldn't breathe, and his entire body went numb as the water smashed him into the jumble of rocks at the cliff base. He went under again, pulled deep, and a flash of lightning somewhere above filtered down into the water, bringing out the deep blue around him, and he saw clouds of his own blood spreading outward in the water.
And then he was up again, and he screamed, finding a voice, as he felt himself thrown against the rocks again, and part of him went to sleep.
###
He actually woke--had the presence to think, I'm awake?
The storm wasn't over--the roar of the waves was all around him, and water broke over him with each crash. George blinked, looked around: he was lying on a staircase. The lighthouse staircase, he thought.
It was the staircase that led from the beach up to the outcropping that the lighthouse was built on. It was barely above the water--he was getting drenched--but he was safe. His leg was tangled in the iron railing that traced the outer lines of the staircase, and he was sure it was broken, but he couldn't feel anything; could barely feel the water that kept spattering his face.
He was alive--that meant something, meant a whole lot of something--and for now, he figured, that would be enough.
Again, he thought What the hell am I doing out here?
There was no answer. So he lay there, broken, knowing that his body was fundamentally wrong, that someone had removed all of his joints and wires, and that he was going to need a lot of work--but he lay there and watched the Pacific as it stirred, and thought that maybe it--and he--meant something after all.
What, he didn't know--but something.
The Pacific was a great dance floor, shuffling and shifting, lit up by beautiful, violent, electric streaks of white across a black sky. For a moment, George imagined, it was like listening to God--like feeling God. He almost wanted to smile.
George closed his eyes--the only part of his body that seemed to work--and imagined that he was back on the deck of the Shiloh, listening to the music, and this time, finding the presence of mind to ask Elaine to dance.
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