Driving Cab: Chapter Forty-Seven

Driving Cab: Chapter Forty -Seven

      Christ , I tell myself as I put my hands behind my head and watch the kids digging in the sand. Latecomers are still arriving. Empty spaces are filling up. Another portable radio adds to the blast of the top twenty. Snatches of conversation strike my ear.

    “Money… Money… Money… Whenever we’re alone that’s all you ever talk about.

    If you’d let me have some money of my own…”

    “Coming out of the water to meet him, her right boob is hanging out. You should’a seen it. I’m frantically waving behind him. She stands there talking all cool…”

    “...Jus’ keep your mouth shut and no one would realize how stupid you are.”

    I sit up, open my eyes, and put on my glasses. About twenty feet in front of us three high school girls are settling down into their blanket. They eye up a lone boy who sits to their left a little closer to the water. They begin laughing and poking fun at him. The girls take off their sweatshirts and expose tan bellies and haltered breasts. I glance at Anne and back to the girls again. Three sets of teenage breasts dance before my eyes.

    To my left, less than ten feet away, a pregnant woman bounces an infant son on her knees and rubs her husbands muscular neck. In front of them two sexy looking college girls and their male escort are passing a jug of white wine and gulping large swigs. More and more sun worshippers are piling in.

    I lie back down and close my eyes. Conversations drift into my ears.  “During our lay over in Tokyo last month, we went down to the beach. Over a million people on the beach the day we were there. Not enough toilet facilities…You can imagine what it was like. Close to the shore, even twenty feet out, you’re swimming in one hundred percent pure piss…”

     “He said, what’s wrong with you? I answered, You see a crowd? You see a crowd or something…”

     “It’s not like I was asking so much. If you just didn’t spend so Goddamned much time with…”

     “I don’t see how they live under such crowded conditions. Have you ever been on the rush hour subway?”

     “It’s not what Jayne said. It seems that Donnie wasn’t really the one that…”

     “It was you who forgot you took out the diaphragm…”

     “Look at the way his tan stops right above the knees and above the elbows…”

     The wind picks up. Surf breaks over the sound of the voices. The water pulls with a rhythmic ebb and flow. Rays of fog-filtered sun fill my face. A lone sea gull rides crosswind over the frothy waves. Suddenly all the voices are silent. Time stops… And then runs several years ahead of this day at the beach. I’m in my Byron back room, at my typewriter recalling the conversations that struck my ears some four or five years ago.  A conversation that I overheard yesterday between my principal, Fritz, and another teacher in the faculty room at Nice School grabs my attention.  “I can honestly say that I love this guy, but sometimes his, I don’t know, creativity? It gets us in trouble. Like, I remember the séance he had in the cafeteria… The parents on the phone the next morning…”

     Time continues to run ahead. It’s Summer 2010. I sit at my computer making the final revision to this story. As I reflect on the visit to Stinson Beach I’m wondering why I depict such a down day.  Almost every time we went the beach back then, it was the high point of our week. I remember Stoke shouting with a great big smile, “Next Sunday we go to the OCEAN!!!!” He was so happy that he could wait a whole week and still be happy. Beach time always gave us a chance to get off by ourselves, to walk the shoreline, chase the waves, see and hear the immensity of the mighty Pacific. If I remember correctly, I had just read Henry Miller’s description of a couple days at the Shore, Sea Side or Atlantic City. He satirizes the sun worshippers and their vulgarity. I think maybe I was attempting to do the same thing in my description of Stinson Beach.

     I remember back at the beach, I opened my eyes and looked through the baking bodies to the crashing shore. Anne got up and walked to the ice chest. “Come on, you can slice the tomatoes and onions,” she called. I fingered the knife self-consciously and glanced at my closest neighbors. Every eye avoided mine as I looked from group to group. I should’a stopped for a bottle of wine like Anne said, I told myself as I layered the meat and cheese. We sat on our blanket eating our picnic lunch and watching more sun worshippers taking up the little space that was left. Anne shivered and put my sweatshirt on over her sweater.

     All around us, clothes were coming off, sun tan lotion rubbing on, bodies turning to expose all sides evenly. Radios blasted in competition with each other. “Let’s go. It’s not gonna warm up,” Anne told me.

     “It’s not dat cold. You need to get up and move around a little,” I answered.

     “Let’s go in the water one more time,” Stoke said and took off in a run.

     “Why don’t you come with us?” I asked Anne.

     “Go ahead. Vickie and I will be down in a minute,” she replied.

     I took off my glasses and trotted after Stoke carefully avoiding the out stretched simmering bodies. Stoke waited at the water’s edge. We waded into the ice-cold water together. Jumping the breakers, I left Stoke at his height, and dove into an on coming wave. After several stokes, I found myself in the calm, and rolled over on my back. A vast expanse of fog bound sky stretched out to the horizon. An enormous wave rushed toward me. I rolled on my stomach and rode it to the shore.

     Stoke was waiting in the rushing foam. I grabbed his six-year-old hand and squinted my eyes to search for our blanket. We gingerly stepped our way avoiding the stretched out sunbathers as best we could.

    Anne and Vickie were shaking out the blanket. We gathered our things and headed for the car. Taking one last look, I saw not a trace of empty beach. The pounding of the surf was lost in the groundless sound of the beached multitudes.