In An Arid Land (2 page)

Back into the waves I go, carrying the tee shirt on a mission of mercy, and when I get to him I holler, "Hey, better put this on, you're roasting." He smiles at me and nods his head in thanks. I take his rod while he slips the shirt on and I very quickly bait his hook with a shrimp out of my own can.

He smiles again, nods again, takes the rod from me, turns, heaves, trying once again for Florida.

About mid-afternoon Ed Senior emerges from the tent squinting and blinking in the blinding glare of sun and sand.

"Good God, Matt, is he still at it?"

"Yessir," I say.

"Has he caught anything?"

"Not that I've noticed."

We glance at each other with looks of wonder and concern, and then sit under the sagging shelter drinking beers.

We sit there for quite a while, saying little, just watching Eddie out in the surf, the flight of an occasional pelican, a sand crab scampering about. The tarp above us is whooshing like a flag now.

Ed Senior is restless after his nap. He fidgets in his chair, scans the beach looking for entertainment. All of a sudden he says, "Hey, let's go do some scavenging, want to?"

"Well sure. Sounds fine with me."

"Wonder if he'll come along?" he says, looking out at Eddie.

"He's got to be tired."

"Gotta be."

"We'll coax him out with beer."

We take six cans from an ice chest and with two of them raised high I struggle through the water to the sandbar while Ed Senior starts the Jeep and drives down to the water's edge to wait. It's a reluctant Eddie who follows me out. He gets in the back seat and the Old One drives us up the beach in the direction we came from yesterday. The tide is out and so Ed Senior guns up the Jeep, races along the wet hard pack, splashing through pockets of water, and we're all grinning over it like riders on a roller coaster. Soon we're at the part of the island where the junk, the jetsam and flotsam, the debris, the detritus whatever you want to call it is the worst, the deepest, the ugliest.

It's a depressing sight 'like the Aftermath', as Eddie put it yesterday when we ground our way through here but heartening, too, to scavengers like us. In the soft sand between the tide line and the high grassy dunes is all the stuff of modern life. Plastic laundry hampers, plastic milk crates, plastic jugs, half submerged in the sand. Huge chunks of lumber with rusty nails protruding dangerously.

Hypodermic needles, little brown bottles, big green bottles, faded beer cans, lengths of oceangoing rope. Gifts from Mexico, New Jersey, Europe and all the ships at sea.

We wander through it, watching where we step, picking up this, picking up that, tossing it down. Soon we settle on rope as our objective no telling what you might use it for. We drive a ways, spot a telltale yellow piece poking out of the sand, stop, get out, pull on it, and twenty feet surface in a long circular line. Two hours we stalk the beach, going five, maybe six miles, until there are two filthy laundry baskets full of coiled, stinking rope in the back of the Jeep. The Prize Piece is perhaps two inches in diameter, perhaps thirty feet long, with impressive loops woven into both ends. Eddie, smiling, says he'll use it as a clothesline, "or maybe to hang myself when the time comes."

Now we are disgusted with scavenging, hot and stinking and exhausted, and headed back to camp. Eddie's driving. He's going fast, right at the water's edge the roller coaster again, only faster, more erratic up and down off low dunes, splashing through cuts in the beach at forty, fifty, sixty miles an hour. We're whizzing along, enjoying the cool breeze, the thrill.

Eddie, grinning ferociously, says, loud over the wind noise, "About time this Jeep started to look and act like a Jeep," and he takes us bounding over a little ridge. "Look at this," he says, pointing to a streak of beach tar on the pretty gray dashboard. "Now that's the way it ought to look." He guns it up, grins all around, his hair blowing, eyes bright. "Watch this," he says and this time all four tires come off the ground.

"Wahoo," I holler, caught up in the moment, his moment.

But I can tell Ed Senior is worried. The Old One is hanging on and frowning now with doubt. He wants to say something but won't, wants to be fatherly but can't. Eddie knows this. He glances over, returns his father's frown, and without warning he turns the Jeep into the surf, sending up spray like a motorboat, soaking us all, and then, stamping his foot on the brake pedal, he takes us to a rough tilting stop. The Jeep rocks up painfully on its side and hangs there for a tense moment before settling itself like a great wounded beast. Eddie smiles and looks around.

"Holy cow, boy, you trying to kill us?" says Ed Senior, and he lets out a nervous laugh. "This ain't a Pershing tank, you know."

Eddie opens his door and gets out. He runs, leaping through the waves, and dives in. Ed Senior and I sit there in the sweltering Jeep, wondering what he's doing.

He emerges, splashes back in, comes right up to the Jeep and leans his big head inside the window, dripping water.

"Y'all go ahead," he says, panting, his face blazing red. "I'll see you in a little while."

"We can wait," says Ed Senior. "Whatever you're doing."

"Naw, go on, I'm collecting sea shells."

"Sea shells!" says the Old One. "What for?"

Eddie backs away into the water, panting and smiling oddly, bends at the waist like a runner to catch his breath, and looks at our wondering faces through the window.

"Because Marcia likes sea shells," he says.

He turns, runs away, jumping through the waves like a big old crazy dog, stretches out his body and dives in again.

The sunset's full above the dunes by the time Eddie appears in camp. Ed Senior, a martini in his hand, complete with olives, is moving fretfully around the fire pit. He has supper well under way not the broiled snapper we'd planned on, but steaks and baked potatoes and even sweet corn, a fine meal.

"About goddamn time you showed up," he says to Eddie in a lilting, teasing voice. "Where're your sea shells?"

It's true; he walked in empty handed.

Giving the Old One a mean glare for bringing it up, Eddie says, "I'm not hungry, don't fix me anything," and Ed Senior returns the glare, his mouth hanging open in exaggerated shock.

"But you gotta make the salad, I'm no good with salad."

"I don't want anything, I tell you."

"Ah, for crying out loud," says Ed Senior. "You can't go without eating, son, you haven't had a bite since breakfast."

"I can go without anything I damn well want to go without," he says, and we're both a little hurt by his tone. We shuffle around in the sand, looking away, glancing back. Eddie seems to regret it but he's not apologizing. In haste he finds his rod and his bait can and he marches out to sea. He's lucky. The moon, about two slivers shy of full, is already up out there, hanging above the horizon like a great white eye giving off a big light.

"Well, I'll say this," the Old One grumbles after a long while. "If determination could feed the world, ole Eddie'd be the breadbasket, wouldn't he? Or maybe the fishing net."

"He'll get over it," I say, thinking hard. "I guess I did."

We glance at each other in the fading sunset, knowing I'm lying in the service of friendship, knowing these are not the facts of the matter, both of us wishing I hadn't said it.

"Let's eat," he mutters, turning toward the fire pit, and we are very quiet with each other all through the meal.

It's late now. The big eye of the moon has crawled well up into the starry sky, its bright light intruding on our privacy, even here, in Remote, Texas. Ed Senior and I have long since had our feast of steak and potatoes, long since concluded that we should leave Eddie's meal warming in the Dutch oven above the coals, long since passed between us the squat round decanter of expensive liqueur that tasted of orange peels and sugar water, long since given up our inebriated talk of nothing (that worthless drowsy kind of talk that always follows the lowering of the lantern's flame when the newly arrived gloom of night involves you in its promise of rest), long since had our sighs and our yawns and let our heads nod, long since offered our good-nights.

The Old One is in the tent, snoring. From my folding chair I can hear him over the night sounds of the surf, and it is somehow endearing to me and comforting.

"Better keep an eye on him," he mumbled before he went to bed, which is what I have done more or less, dozing and waking and watching. Long after midnight and he's still out there, on the first sandbar, casting out and reeling in, casting out and reeling in, trying to hit Florida, a dark irregularity in the triangular gloss of reflected moonlight, a human chink in a piece of finely wrought silver made beautiful by the imperfection.

At last I rouse myself and carry my folding chair out to the very edge of the water. I smoke cigarettes I shouldn't smoke, drink a beer I shouldn't drink, find the Big Dipper, imagine for a while, and then, growing bored with its simple design, I wish I were a smarter man who knew the positions and configurations of other constellations so that I could find them, too, and imagine even more. Off in the distance, beyond the jetties, the fat old dredge in the channel shines like a small city, its red and white lights speaking of other humans hereabout, rough working guys doing their jobs all through the night, reminding me that we are never, in the modern world, as remote as we'd like to think.

I am, on the whole, terrified of dark water. There are wily sharks out there and jellyfish and stingrays and killer currents and no telling what else, and I am amazed, still, that my friend does not share this terror. Friendship, like love, I think, is one of the grand mysteries. Who knows what brings strangers together and drives comrades apart? Living with the mystery takes courage, I know, the courage to stand in dark water and to cast your line toward Florida, the courage to hope that, in spite of yourself, ignoring the odds, you just might catch something.

Back in camp I take our Prize Rope out of the Jeep and then I fumble around until I find my rod and my bait can. Dragging the rope, I walk out into the water until it's lapping at my thighs. A sneaky chill wriggles across my back and I have to stop. The trench is just before me, deep and hidden and fearful, and it takes me a moment to plunge in. When I do I go ahead quickly, kicking through the water, trailing the heavy rope behind, until I'm up safely on the sandbar and making my way toward Eddie.

When I'm close enough to hear, he calls out above the waves, "Been wondering when you'd show up." His voice is eerie-sounding, louder now and more distinct, out here in the watery void.

"Well I've never much cared for bathing with sharks."

I can see him smile in the moonlight, his teeth shining like phosphorescent gems. He's glad to see me, and I'm glad I came.

"What's that?" he says, noticing the rope.

"This, my friend, is our lifeline," I say. "Here, put this loop around your waist."

At first he laughs, says, "What?!" but when he sees I'm serious he does what he's told. We take turns holding our gear as the other one slips the rope over his head and slithers into it, a slow clumsy business. It's a heavy weight, but the water buoys the rope somewhat and when it's done I feel better.