Breathless

Twenty-nine



The incident occurred in the afternoon, and Tom Bigger thought about nothing else all day and into the night before deciding what he must do.
He was vomiting into a trash barrel when it happened.
Without a shriek or shrill, a flock of seagulls swooped out of nowhere, wings beating the air low over his head. The mere act of ducking, turning, and looking up into the sun was enough to trigger vertigo.
A trash barrel stood a step away. If it hadn’t been there, in his confusion he might have thrown up on his shoes. He had done that before.
The barrel served a small rest area off the coastal highway. Two concrete benches offered vantage points from which to enjoy the sun-spangled sea and a curve of coastline.
Occasionally, on days when he looked as presentable as he got, Tom climbed up from the beach to panhandle the motorists who stopped to commune with nature. If he tried to beg when he was too rough-looking, the marks didn’t get out of their cars.
The name Bigger fit him better in his youth. At forty-eight, more than fifty pounds lighter than in his glory days, he was gaunt, although at six foot five, he still towered over most people. Large-boned, with wrists as thick as axe handles, with sledgehammer hands, he could knock down anyone, but the condition of his face ensured that no one ever challenged him.
Three times over the years, when the self-hatred became too poisonous to contain, he pounded his massive fists into his own face until the pain burned as fiercely as he deserved. Each time, someone found him, and he was hospitalized.
He accepted basic care but refused reconstructive surgery other than some dental work. He wanted to look like what he was: broken, the nonfunctional wreckage of a man. He wanted people to see the real him and to witness their pity, their disgust.
Humiliation kept his acrimony focused on himself. He feared only that one day his bitterness would turn to hostility against others and that he would act upon his enmity. He dreaded what violence he might perpetrate, what a horror he might become.
When he panhandled, he held a sign that identified him as a veteran, the survivor of a bomb blast in one Middle East conflict or another, but he was a veteran only of the war within himself.
On this day, shaved, hair freshly washed in the sea, wearing rumpled khakis and a parrot-pattern Hawaiian shirt, Tom appeared sufficiently presentable to take in thirty dollars and change in three hours.
He was alone in the rest area when the seagulls dived at him, the vertigo overcame him, and he vomited into the barrel.
Stomach purged, he took a pint of tequila from a pants pocket to wash the foul taste from his mouth. As he put the bottle to his lips, the incident occurred.
When Tom Bigger at last could move, he walked north from the rest area, until the sheer bluff became a steep sandstone slope. He descended in a shambling rush to the shore. On the beach, he realized that he had neither taken a swallow of the tequila nor held on to the bottle.
For some months, he had been sheltering in a ten-foot-deep cave at the base of the bluff, directly below the scenic viewpoint. With his bedroll and his few belongings, he kept a supply of tequila and a tin filled with joints of sinsemilla.
In recent years, he drank more than he smoked. Now, he wanted both, until he achieved oblivion.
For the first time in memory, however, he denied himself what he craved. Instead, he waded fully clothed into the sea and sat where the low surf broke gently against his chest.
On this stretch of state-owned coastline, in respect of certain endangered species, the beach was permanently closed to swimmers, surfers, campers, and fishermen. Bankrupt California didn’t have the funds to enforce much more than the tax laws, however, and Tom didn’t worry about being hassled by any kind of shore patrol.
The outer limits of the town lay almost a mile to the south, once a community filled with promise but now just another place where people waited for the end of one thing and the beginning of something worse. He walked into town most days, but no one from there ever came this far north on foot.
Over the years, he’d lived in many places: tents, culverts, junkyard cars, a half-collapsed barn, abandoned buildings. His hope had been that the cave in the sandstone bluff might be his last home.
Six months ago, he twice had a dream about living just above the high-tide line in a cave with smooth sinuous walls, where inflowing wind sometimes spoke in many voices. In the dream, the sea rose in a monster swell and came to him as he lay watching the water claim the stars.
After the second dream, he came to the coast and walked miles of lonely beaches and sandless shingle, until he found his current quarters with its smooth and sinuous walls. He had believed in the promise of the tsunami, and he had known what to do: Wait for the great wave, the drowning rush.
The incident in the rest area changed everything. He no longer knew what he should do.
He sat in the surf while the day waned. If the sea would not keep its promise to him, then perhaps it would wash into him an understanding of what he had seen, what it meant, and what he must do now instead of waiting for the wave.
Twice people in the rest area high above shouted down to him. He didn’t acknowledge them. Later, two young men descended from the bluff, either to see if they could help him or, more likely, to see if they could have some cruel fun with him. As they approached, one of them said, “Hey, dude, where’s your surfboard?”
When he turned to look up at them, they halted at the sight of his face. Their attitude and expressions changed, and they backed off a few steps.
As the two conferred in whispers, Tom raised his hands out of the surging water and showed them his huge fists.
The young men retreated to the bluff and did not return.
After a while, Tom moved farther back on the beach, so the surf broke at his feet.
Neither twilight nor nightfall brought understanding.
The moon silvered the froth of the breaking surf.
Far out on the black sea, ship lights moved north, moved south, grew brighter, then dwindled.
As if stepping out of time from a prehuman world, a great blue heron of singular size appeared to the south of him, a prehistoric presence almost five feet tall, wading through the shallow purling water of the collapsed surf, feeding as it progressed.
Heron often trumpeted during a hunt. This one stalked silently. The bird stopped near Tom’s feet and regarded him with its tiny moon-monocled eyes. Instead of spreading its immense wings and taking flight or issuing its threatening cry of aggression, it paused only briefly and then dismissively moved past him, continuing north along the shore, spearing small fish with its sharp bill.
The moon, the ships, the hunting heron seemed to have the same message for Tom Bigger: Rise, go, keep moving.
Suddenly chilled, he stripped out of his wet garments and left them on the beach. He dressed in one of his two changes of clothes: thick socks, walking shoes, jeans, and a denim shirt.
He packed six pints of tequila in his backpack and left the rest of his supply buried in the sand at the back of the cave, although he suspected that he would never return.
Because his bedroll was worn and greasy, he left it in the cave, but he packed his tin of sinsemilla joints and the pistol.
With no destination yet in mind, he took his direction from the traffic on the sea. At the moment, two clusters of ship lights were visible. Both vessels were sailing south, so Tom Bigger walked south toward the town.
He didn’t believe the town would be his ultimate destination. On arrival, perhaps he would receive a sign by which he would know where to go from there.
Sometimes he made decisions based on dreams that seemed to be predictive, as when he followed a dream to a cave by the sea, hoping for an obliterating tidal wave. The dreams in which he believed and from which he took direction were always death dreams, foreboding but at the same time alluring.
He never previously expected to see signs and portents in the waking world. Perhaps he would see none now. But the incident in the deserted rest area had upended him. He would not be surprised if at least he sensed being guided by mundane things—like blue herons and distant ships—that suddenly seemed to have greater significance and require interpretation.
The damp, compacted sand underfoot. The vast night-shrouded sea to his right. The sky hard and cold but stippled with stars. To his left, the land, the highways and the cities, the people and their pain, the infinite possibilities, the unspeakable horrors, the world long lost to him, everything that might have been for him but never was, perhaps now his future.