Billy Straight

37

The sun comes up behind me, orange. Brighter than in the park, no trees to cover it. The ocean is roaring, gray. The black plastic's too thin; I'm cold.

No one's out on the beach yet, so I just lie there watching the sun and the few cars up on the coast highway going back and forth. The thick poles that hold up the pier are black with tar and crusted with barnacles. I see one that's open, reach over and poke it, and it closes.

The Jacques Cousteau book had a chapter about barnacles. They stay where they are, eat whatever floats by. They make their own glue and it's as good as Krazy Glue. Sometimes they're impossible to move.

Okay, now it's warming up a little; I better move. I get up and shake the sand out of my hair, fold the plastic and tuck it behind one of the poles, using a rock to weigh it down.

Time to get some new stuff. Food, money. A hat. I remember that sunburn. Maybe some sunscreen, too.

Where should I go? Should I leave L.A.? Not up north, 'cause that's closer to Watson. Down south, like to San Diego? But what if that doesn't work out? The next stop would be Mexico and there's no way I'm going to any foreign country.

If I stay in L.A., where will I hide?

I think about it for a long time and get really scared. Same feeling like when I watched PLYR- I need to stop thinking about that…

It's stupid to even be thinking of a plan. I have no future. Even if I survive for a few months a year, two years, so what? I'd still be a kid, no schooling, no money, no control over anything.

Still no one out on the beach. It looks so tan and peaceful. The ocean, too, gray as steel except where the tide comes rolling in, throwing up spray, like spitting at the sky.

Spitting at God…

Wouldn't it be nice to just walk into the water, let yourself be carried away? Maybe you'd drown. Or maybe there'd be a miracle and you'd wash up like one of those bottles with a message in it on some island with palm trees. Girls wearing just grass skirts, long black hair down to their butts, and you'd come out of the ocean like some god and they'd be all thrilled to see you, fight with each other to be your girlfriend, take care of you, feed you some barbecued pig with an apple in its mouth and fruit that they just pick from the trees, no one has to work.

Either way, no worries.

I get up, walk across the beach to the tide line, roll my pants up and stand there, let the waves trickle over my toes.

Cold. My feet get numb and they look like white wax.

How long would it take before you stopped feeling cold? Before your body stopped feeling anything?

I read in a nature book that gazelles and wildebeest chased by lions stop feeling pain, so their death becomes easier.

That didn't happen to me with the pervs, so maybe it's just animals.

Or maybe I just didn't get… close enough.

If you didn't feel or worry, you could just give yourself up like some sacrifice- like Jesus did.

I must have walked, because now I'm in the water up to my knees and my pants are getting wet and kind of ballooning and swirling around. Not so cold anymore. It feels clean. I keep going. The water's sloshing against my belt and I stand there and look across the ocean; maybe I'll see a boat or a whale spouting.

A few birds are out there, flying around, diving. I take another step. Just one, but it makes a big difference, the ground drops out from under me and all of a sudden I'm up to my neck, trying to step back, but I can't get a hold on to anything and now I feel the water moving under me and I'm in over my head, swallowing water, choking- up again, I can see the top of the water, the beach is getting smaller. I start to swim, but it doesn't help. Something's pushing me forward, I have no control, start kicking, waving my arms around, knowing this is stupid, you have to stay calm stay calm, but I'm being pushed out, forced, I don't want this! I'm tiny, weaker than a barnacle, because I have no glue. Why am I thinking about Mom now, how bad she'll feel, so cold, my eyes burn, my throat burns, my eyes got to keep them open but ohnocan'tkeepmyheadabov

Up in the air again, coughing spitting, eyes burning, throat hurts like a knife scraping it and I'm still being carried out by the- no, the beach is getting closer-

The ocean tosses me up, the sand gets even closer. Releasing me, like Jonah? No, no, here I go under again, swallowing so much water I think I'll explode, then up, coughing, vomiting, rocks in the water, hitting me, stinging.

The ocean playing with me. Which way will it throw me now?

Stones scraping the bottom of my body. The ground. Sand.

Back on shore.

Sand sticks to my soaked clothes. Salt in the scratches makes them burn. I roll away from the water.

Safe.

Another chance.

God?

Or did even the ocean think I was trash, spit me back like bad food?

I hurry back toward the pier, still coughing and spitting up salt water, collapse, stay there trying to get a little sun, dry out. A few people are out on the beach now. I just mind my own business. After an hour I'm drier, but still wet, my chest hurts and I'm scratched up by the sand but… I'm here.

I need to concentrate. Money and a hat. Some food. Sunscreen.

Mostly dry, I take a walk up to the pier. There's a Ferris wheel, some bumper cars, and a merry-go-round, but they're all shut and locked and there's nothing to take there. A few restaurants, but they're closed, too, and the only food around is dry bits of popcorn stuck to the floor.

All the way at the end of the pier is a bait shack that's open, some dirty-looking guy behind a counter and big white bathtub-type tanks full of anchovies, some of them already dead and floating to the top. A few people are fishing, mostly old Chinese guys and a few black guys. No one's catching anything; everyone looks bored.

The two garbage cans I find are full of fish guts and they stink so bad I almost puke. I leave the pier.

Up above the beach is a street full of fancy-looking restaurants and hotels; nothing there for me. North is a small park with some old people and homeless guys, and if you keep looking, the street just seems to disappear. All those trees- too much like you-know-where.

So I walk south and things start to look a little more familiar- motels and apartment buildings, weirdos who could be from the Boulevard. I find half a doughnut on the street and it looks okay so I eat it. Next block, I see part of a Twix bar left on the sidewalk, but it's too melted and gross-looking and I only eat a small bit of it.

A while later, a sign says I'm in Venice. Small houses, people, lots of Mexicans. I walk down a street. At the end is the ocean again, and soon I'm on this big wide path called Ocean Front Walk, like a giant sidewalk, the ocean on one side, stores on the other, all sorts of people- punks, blacks, beautiful bikini-girls on roller skates, their butt cheeks hanging out, guys looking at them. Young guys- like college students- old people sitting on benches, bikers with tattoos, lots of big, mean-looking dogs. Some Arnold Schwarzenegger-type guys are exercising in these fenced-off areas, their bodies all greased up so the muscles look like grapefruit trying to burst through the skin. Lifting weights, rubbing chalk on their hands, being huge and cool, showing off.

The stores here are mostly small and cheap-looking. Fast food, stands selling ice cream, cold drinks, sunglasses, souvenirs, postcards, T-shirts, bathing suits.

Hats that say CALIFORNIA! or MALIBU! or VENICE! I'd love some dry clothing, but there are too many people around to take something.

Still, this might be a good place to hang out, see what happens later.

I decide to walk from one end of Ocean Front to the other, see what turns up.

Halfway down, I see a little gray building with a six-pointed star over the door. A Jewish star- I know that from my history book, the chapter “The Middle East: Birth of Civilization.”

A Jewish church- what do they call them, synagons? I go over. Jewish letters next to the door, then English ones. Over the door it says CONGREGATION BETH TORAH.

This might be good. The Jews always have money. At least that's what Moron used to say- he'd go off on how they were all fucking bankers, sucking the blood out of the country, killing Jesus, and now they wanted to take our money, too.

Like he ever had money.

Then I think: Why would he be right? He was wrong about everything else. But still… what's a church doing in the middle of all these businesses unless they're out to make money?

It wasn't just Moron; Mom used to agree with him, say, Cowboy, they really got a talent for making money, must be in the blood.

“You stupid bitch.” He laughed. “It ain't talent, it's 'cause they cheat us. Fucking ZOG- know what that is? Zionist Occupation Government, they want to take us over, not even human- come from the devil fucking a snake, didja know that? The Aryan race is the bona fide chosen people.”

That night I was sitting at the kitchen table trying to study the Civil War. But then Mom started telling a story and I listened. About some rich Jewish family who owned a big strawberry farm down near Oxnard; her parents and her used to pick there when she was a kid. How the Jews had a big white two-story house and a Cadillac.

“Fucking bloodsuckers,” Moron said.

“Actually, they was okay, kinda nice-” she started. But he looked at her and she said, “Except they sure loved their money. The wife always dressed like she was going out to dinner, and she was just a farm wife. And here was this big house, maybe it was even three stories, buncha TV antennas all over the roof, but we slept in these little migrant shacks, kerosene heaters.”

“Fucking A.”

Even if it's mostly lies, sometimes lies have some truth. And I don't need thousands of Jewish dollars, just some spare change.

A sign next to the synagon door says prayers will be held on Friday night and that the time for lighting candles is 7:34 P.M., whatever that means.

No one's looking. I try the door. Locked. The next place over is called Cafe Eats, and it's closed too.

There's a space between the church and Cafe Eats. I slip around to the back, where there's an alley, parked cars, but none driving. Two spaces behind the synagon but no cars. They're praying Friday night. That's tomorrow.

I check out the back door. Plain wood, with some little wooden thing nailed to the frame on the right side, also with a Jewish star. Probably some kind of good-luck charm, maybe asking God for money.

The back door's locked, too. Right next to it is a window, a small one, too small for a man to fit through, but not for me. A screen over it, just like at the pineapple house. Also like that one, it comes right off.

I don't have to break this window; it's loose. When I push up on it, it jiggles. So I shove harder and feel it give some more, then something pops and it slams open and I look up and down the alley.

Still no one. I'm in.

I'm getting good at this.

The room I land in is a bathroom, small but clean- a toilet, a sink, and a mirror. No shower. The mirror tells me I don't look as bad as I thought, just the scratches on my face and some white crust around my ears and my lips. I wash it off, use the toilet.

Considering I almost drowned, I look pretty good.

I thank God, in case it was Him; wash my hands.

Now, let's find some Jewish money.