Pinball, 1973

4

The beacon stood at the end of a long jetty that reached out at an angle from the shore. Barely ten feet tall, the beacon wasn't particularly big. Fishing boats had used its light until the water became so polluted that there weren't any more fish to be had offshore. Not that there had ever been any harbor to speak of. The fishermen had merely set up winches and makeshift wooden frames along the beach as guide-rails for hoisting the boats up onto the shore by rope. Near the beach lived maybe three fishing families, and every day they'd lay out the morning's catch of small fry in wooden boxes to dry in the sun behind the sheltering seawall.

The fisher-folk were eventually driven out because 1) the fish had already gone; 2) local residents had become quite vocal about fishermen not belonging in a residential community; and 3) the shanties they'd built unlawfully occupied public property. That all took place in 1962. Who knows where they went? The three shanties were summarily leveled, while the rotting fishing boats, for lack of any other use or place to dump them, were hauled up amidst a seaside grove of trees and children would play there.

Once these fishing boats were out of the picture, only an occasional yacht would sail close to shore, or perhaps a freighter might weigh emergency anchor in dense fog or during a typhoon warning, but very few vessels ever availed themselves of the beacon any more. And even if they did, there was only an outside chance it would really make much difference.

Weathered to a dark patina, the beacon was molded in a bell-shape. Or else it was a brooding man, seen from behind. When the sun went down, and touches of blue filtered into the fading afterglow, an orange lamp would light up in the knob of the bell and slowly begin to revolve. The beacon always pinpointed the onset of nightfall exactly. Against the most gorgeous sunsets or in dim drizzling mist, the beacon was ever true to its appointed moment: that precise instant in the alchemy of light and dark when darkness tipped the scales.

So many times in childhood had the Rat headed out to the beach at dusk just to catch that moment. Toward late afternoon, as the waves died down he'd walk along the jetty out to the beacon, counting the weatherworn paving stones as he went. Beneath the surface of the unbelievably crystalline water he could see schools of the slender fish of early autumn. As if in search of something, they'd trace looping arcs beside the jetty, before shooting off into deeper waters.

When he finally reached the beacon, he'd sit down on the end of the jetty and slowly gaze out over the water. Thin cloud trails brushed across a sky of perfect blue as far as the eye could see. A boundless deep blue, so deep it set the boy's legs trembling. It was as if he were shaking with fear. The scent of the sea, the tinge of the wind, everything was amazingly vivid. He'd take his time drinking in the vista, letting it slowly but surely spread through him, then just as slowly he'd turn to look behind him. Now it was his own world he observed, set off utterly in the distance by this depth of sea. Back there, the white-sand beach and seawall, the green pine woods tamped down to a low-lying expanse, and behind that the blue-gray hills ascending skyward.

Off in the distance to the left was a gigantic harbor. He could just make out the massive cranes, floating docks, boxlike warehouses, freighters, and high-rise buildings. To the right, curving inland along the shoreline, was a quiet residential area and yacht harbor, and a block of old sake storehouses; then beyond that, the industrial sector lay with its rows of spherical tanks and tall smokestacks, their white smoke drifting lazily across the sky. Further still, for all the tenyear-old Rat knew, you dropped off the edge of the world.

Throughout his childhood from spring to early autumn, the Rat made these little excursions out to the beacon. On days when the breakers were high, his feet would get all wet from the spray, the wind moaning overhead as he padded along, slipping time and again on the mossy stones. He knew that path out to the beacon better than anything. And while he sat there on the end of the jetty, he'd let the sound of the waves fill his ears, watch the clouds and schools of tiny sweetfish, take pebbles he'd pocketed on the way and throw them out into the deep.

Then when dusk began to settle he would retrace his steps, back to his own world. And on the way home, a loneliness would always claim his heart. He could never quite get a grip on what it was. It just seemed that whatever lay waiting "out there" was all too vast, too overwhelming for him to possibly ever make a dent in.

A woman he knew lived near the jetty. Whenever the Rat passed the spot, he recalled that aimless feeling of childhood, the scent of those twilights. He stopped his car on the shore road, and cut through the sparse tract of pines that had been planted on the beach to hold back the sand. The dry sand rasped beneath his feet.

They'd built apartment houses where the fishermen's shacks had been. The canna grass in front of the apartments had, by the looks of it, had the life tramped out of it. Her apartment was on the second floor where, on windy days, a fine spray of sand would pepper the windowpanes. She had a pretty little apartment with southern exposure, but for some reason a brooding air hung over the place.

It's the sea, she said. It's too close. The tides, the wind, the roar of the waves, that fishy smell. Everything.

There's no fishy smell, the Rat said.

There is, she snapped, bringing the blinds crashing down with a pull of the cord. If you lived here, you'd know.

Sand struck the window.