Page 11 of The California Dreamers

10

Pour one out

After a long time, Griff folded the letter and slipped it into his pocket. He said wearily, “Yes. Give her some food, Charlie. Keep her from injuring herself on the rocks.”

Maybe we could at least delay this interview, keep Pauline on the other side of the 8 until we all agreed it would be a mistake to even talk to her, no matter what Cap wanted—or thought he wanted. “What if we ask her to write her list of questions for us first so we can consider them?” I asked. “It’ll stall her while we figure out what to do.”

“Fine,” Mag said after a pause. “It’s not like we can boat her back to the mainland before dark, anyway.”

“She’ll stay on the other side of the island.” I hoped to calm Dyl and maybe reassure myself. I needed to “paint a story” like I’d done when he was little. The stranger confined to the other circle in the 8, while we stayed, safe and hidden, in our lush, leafy circle. Dyl nodded, but his distraction told me I hadn’t entirely succeeded.

“She’s a tenderfoot,” Griff said, trying to regain his confidence. “She couldn’t find her way over here, in any case.”

“You really saved the day, Charlemagne,” Mag said. “Without your bell, that woman could’ve snuck up and taken pictures of us.”

I swallowed. Charlie kept looking my way, her expression searching, like she expected something from me. But what? She was the one who had kept that brown hood cinched tight back on the boat.

“And…thank you, Charlie,” I managed, not meeting her eyes, speaking to a spot a little higher than the DFW patch on her left sleeve. “We owe you. This is a risk for you.”

Charlie shrugged. “Pay me back with a wave sometime.”

***

Back at camp, I busied myself packing food for Charlie to share with the reporter. The “kitchen,” as my brothers called it, sat atop a rectangle of pebbles near the picnic table. A tidy line: butane stove, cooler, pots, the deep zinc washing-up basin Mama’d plunged her hands into forever.

Charlie watched from the other side of the gear while I knelt and scooped and sealed way too much fish and rice into metal navy supply containers.

“That’s plenty!” she cried. “Sure I can’t help?”

But I shook her off, packing more and more.

“Thank you,” she said stiffly when I finally stood, handing her the last tin. “It’s enough for an army.”

“Well, you can feed the army, too, when our visitor phones them and they bust us on their property.” My voice was strained, my attempt at lightness a failure.

“We won’t let that happen.” Then Charlie cocked her head. “Hey, I wanted to tell you the reason I hid from you on the boat—I know you’re wondering why.”

Why, given the chance to see me after fifteen years, you hid in an oversize anorak? Hadn’t crossed my mind at all, Charlie.

“It’s fine,” I said.

“I just thought you’d want to focus on Cap’s memorial. That you were dealing with enough. And I was only supposed to ferry everyone here and keep watch. I didn’t think we’d have time to talk, to really talk, until after the paddle-out, anyway. I thought maybe we’d catch up after.”

“I get it,” I said. “I mean, let’s do that.”

We had it now, though—a chance to catch up. Yet we were both stuck in awkward silence. I knelt, wiped at a nonexistent smudge on the basin. Stood with the rag in my hand, willing myself not to twist it. Charlie. Two feet away, after all this time.

Then something occurred to her. “So why did your brothers tell you it was me driving the boat? I don’t mind. I’m just surprised, since it wasn’t the plan.”

How could you imagine that would work? I felt you there. Remembered the way you tilted your chin at the sky to check clouds. You did it the first day I saw you, when you wore your too-big wet suit with your hair tucked down…

“The twins let your name slip,” I said. “You know, in the confusion of your bell, running up the hill to hide. Well, speaking of, better not keep our honored guest waiting.”

“But we’ll catch up later. Right?” she asked.

“Yes! Definitely!” I smiled, a bright shield of a smile to match her own, until she was out of sight.

Dyl signaled that dinner was ready and I followed him to what the boys called “the clearing,” though the weeds were so tall it hardly felt clear. They’d set aluminum camp chairs around their faux flames, the stack of pointy red rocks and rusted metal I’d admired earlier.

“Dyl and I gathered the metal scraps from a little cove on the west side, the rough side,” Mag explained. “It collects every piece of flotsam in the Pacific, we’ll show you. If there’s time.”

After that, the four of us dined in eerie silence—still no Mama.

I watched Dyl out of the corner of my eye, grateful he hadn’t bolted, spooked as he obviously was. Griff was fidgety, barely eating. And Mag ate, but kept disappearing abruptly into the trees with his knapsack. His movements were loose, his hair damp and messy.

After Mag’s third trip, when he sat and placed the bag at his feet, there was an unmistakable clink. I’d written his behavior off as a natural result of the day’s surprises, but now I spotted the reflection of sunset on glass in his bag.

“I knew the weight of our cargo felt off,” Griff said wearily. “Exactly how many beers did you sneak onto the boat, Mag?”

Mag squinted and held his thumb and forefinger together, indicating a teeny bit . Then, slowly, he widened them into an L. “Who remembers our book on Roman numerals?”

I had to laugh. “Fifty beers, Magnus. You’ve got fifty beers stashed on this island?”

Griff rubbed his hair. “Magnus Pertinax Merrick. You could’ve capsized us. You’d better account for every one of those fifty bottles when you clean up.”

“I will leave no trace .” Mag finished the bottle he’d been concealing, reached into his pack for another, pulled out an opener and popped the cap. Then he took a long swig.

Griff echoed Cap’s old phrasing: “Alcohol is for the weak. For pathetic spring breakers. For citizens who have nothing else to come home to after a workday. Cap’s rolling in his—”

“Urn?” Mag asked, holding his bottle aloft.

Dyl and I traded glances, worried that this would set Griff off, but he seemed to have little fight in him.

“He’s not even drunk,” Griff said to me. “He’s acting like a clown to get to me.”

“Says the prig.”

“We’re all upset because of the letter,” I said, to prevent this moment from spiraling due to the twins’ age-old grievances. “We’re angry at—” At him. Because he never explained himself, not back then, and not now. “We’re angry at the situation. Let’s not take it out on each other.”

“I’m not angry,” Griff insisted. “Cap had his reasons.” Yet he seemed lost in memory.

Mag pulled another beer out of his bag and cracked it open. “Anyone else want to partake?”

I could taste it—icy Pacifico. I was here for another twelve hours at least, there was a reporter eager to dredge up god knew what questions about our history, Mama was MIA, and the conversation between Charlie and I had been hopelessly awkward. I held my hand out.

Mag passed me the bottle, singing to the tune of “Row Your Boat”: “Ro, Ro, for your throat…”

Griff abstained, ever loyal to Cap’s rules. “You’re an ass, Magnus.” But he smiled tiredly, and didn’t say a word about my drinking.

It was getting dark, our metal plates, at our feet, long since emptied. When there was a crack in the trees behind us, we all flinched and Dyl rose to his feet. Not worried about an animal, but our human visitor, I guessed. Pauline Cowley.

“She’s far away, Dyl,” I said.

He nodded and sat back down. Then he asked thoughtfully, “Why do people care so much about that photograph?” It was the first time he’d spoken since she’d arrived.

There was a long silence. I’d wondered the same, often, but had always stuffed the question down. My feelings about the photo’s popularity were painfully complex. When I’d first seen it, there had been a surge of pride…before everything the photo wrought took that away.

But now, for the first time, I was compelled to answer honestly.

“I guess it makes them happy,” I said at last. “It’s California like it is in dreams. It’s…freedom. Sun.”

“People think surfers have mastered the most elusive trick in life—how to empty your brain,” Mag said. “Like we have no worries. People are stupid.”

Griff added, “They tape that poster of us to their office walls, Cap told me once. He called it ‘an imaginary portal out of self-imposed drudgery.’ He called them ‘poor souls.’ Remember?”

I nodded, smiled. Cap had pitied citizens, in his best moments, when his other feelings toward them didn’t crowd that one out. It was easy to forget that.

Dyl spoke quietly. “Charlie showed me a poster of a fox family that her work friend taped inside the big shed.” He tilted his head in thought, a mature gesture, but when he spoke, he seemed to channel the piercing simplicity of younger Dyl’s worldview: “Pictures of happy families make people happy.”

The other three of us were silent again for a moment. Surprised, humbled that we’d missed this simple point— Dreamers portrayed a family. I smiled at him, “You’re right, Dyl.”

Mag cleared his throat. “So, Ronan, speaking of families. What was it like, seeing yourself on T-shirts and assorted bric-a-brac up in Oregon?”

“Surreal.” I sipped my beer. “I was at a gift shop with my boys the first time. A hundred miles inland—we’re not talking tourist hotspot.” The boys had been four: I hadn’t left the farm much until then, but had begun venturing out, realizing I couldn’t hide the world completely from my sons. “They wanted something special for Lou, for Father’s Day.”

“You and your husband seem happy,” Dyl said.

I hesitated, then admitted it: “We’re separated. That is, if you count our marriage as legitimate, since I used phony papers. He still doesn’t know about that.”

Mag raised his eyebrows. “Complicated.”

“Yes. Anyway…that day in the gift shop. I’m looking at dog mugs, cat coasters, and there the six of us are, on some cheap plastic tumblers. Over the words West Coast, Best Coast.”

“Cute,” Griff said dismissively.

I had held one of the tumblers in my hand a long time, overcome that I was so many miles from the Merricks, by how I’d left, worried about how they were doing. It was bizarre, how the photo comforted and thrilled people—it had to be, or they wouldn’t pay for it. It gave them something.

But with me, it only seemed to take.

“And is that what your twins bought for Father’s Day?” Dyl asked, pulling me from the memory. His eyes were bright with anticipation; I knew he was trying to visualize my life now.

“Oh, thank God, no. They chose a barbecuing apron with a yellow Lab who looks like ours on it.”

The daughter on the next farm was caring for ZBoy; I’d told her I was going to Portland for a few days to buy a surprise birthday gift, and she shouldn’t mention my leaving. The farm, my life there seemed so far away.

Mag blew a low, dramatic note with the mouth of his beer bottle. “I have an idea. I could hit a gift shop on Catalina before the paddle-out. Get a cup with us on it for Pauline Coward, as a souvenir of her visit.”

“Brother.” Griff’s tone was kind.

“Pauline Cowley,” Dyl corrected.

I wondered how many beers Mag had drunk. He went on, “It’s perfect. I’ll get T-shirts, too. Let’s all paddle out wearing them, and Pauline Coward can photograph us for her article.”

Mag wouldn’t let up. “It’s brilliant, it’ll be like those portraits within portraits. Remember that painting in the art history book in the vanilla library?”

Dyl and I said in unison, “David Teniers.”

I pictured our younger doppelg?ngers, printed on cotton, tagging along for the paddle-out. Thirty-five Merricks, total, like that old Teniers painting crowded with portraits and real people.

The image was disrespectful, grotesque, bizarre. But it made all four of us laugh.

At first, Griff’s laugh was just a sputter behind his hand that he tried to pass off as a cough, but it was undeniable. “We shouldn’t,” he said. “We’re awful.”

That only set us off more. An exquisite relief, to laugh about that damn photograph.

“So, Ro,” Mag said. “Since we’re talking about our education. How’re those geometry lessons serving you?”

I held out my Pacifico bottle as if to shake beer on his foot. “Fabulously. Mag, you fiend.”

He yanked his leg away, smiling mischievously. “When did you realize?”

“When I was trying to help my sons with their extremely basic math homework.” Because Mag’s geometry “lessons,” I’d learned as an adult, were impressively intricate tall tales. I filled in the others: “Do you know he taught me Pythagoras was an early surfer with a triangular surfboard?”

When our laughter ebbed again, I asked, “Did Cap know about that?”

Mag shook his head. “I told him his antique math primers were all anyone needed.”

I wished I’d clued into Mag’s tiny rebellion back then. Maybe he and I would have been better friends. Or maybe I’d have seen only my own vulnerability as the butt of Mag’s joke, not appreciating that he was just a kid, too.

“Let’s pour one out for the old man.” Mag tipped his beer onto the edge of the synthetic fire. “Oh, Dylly, want one?”

Dyl stood, not saying a word, and for a minute I feared he was upset. He crossed the clearing, over to the shed, and went inside.

He emerged a moment later with a wood crate labeled Saline Filter-Tabz 144-ct and set it between Griff and Mag, then made a second trip to the shed as we all exchanged confused looks.

This time, he came out holding the blue urn. He positioned it gently atop the crate, returning to his seat in our circle.

For a moment, we all regarded the urn in silence.

Then Griff fumbled in the backpack at his feet, pulling something from it, and rose, approaching the urn so quickly I couldn’t see what he’d carried over. He knelt in front of the urn, his back still blocking my view of whatever he was doing. For a sick second I thought he was kneeling in worship.

He straightened, evaluating, then stepped closer to the crate, made an adjustment. Satisfied, he took his seat again.

Griff had set Cap’s Greek captain’s hat on the urn. Tipped forward and slightly tilted, the way Cap always wore it, aslant over his left brow.

Griff wiped his cheek, a punishing swipe. He did it so fast I couldn’t tell if his face had glistened, or if it was only my imagination, and then he cleared his throat. “He looked too small before.”

We listened to the night sounds of the islands. That wistful bird call: Whishooolleeee… Whishooolleeee… The Pacific’s breath, calm now, whispering through a million leaves.

“Any minute he’s going to start calisthenics,” Dyl said.

Mag, his face lit dimly from the lamp in the firepit, smiled wide. “Squirrellies. God, those made your ass hurt.”

I remembered the calisthenic routine perfectly, had even taught a modified version to my boys. But it was only something we did for fun, out in the fields. And there was no wind-sprint race, no fiercely coveted hat-tip at the morning’s winner. The companionable silence, the joy of rising early and running outdoors, though—they were the same. Sometimes consciously, sometimes not, I’d tried to hold on to the best of what Cap had given me.

“I tried to make his coconut-date cereal a few times, but it wasn’t the same,” I said. “That metal scoop. Do you still have it?”

“Of course! That thing could jolt me from a coma.” Griff tapped his tin fork on his plate, a soft echo of Cap’s meal bell. Two raps, no more, because if you didn’t get to breakfast by the second clang, you weren’t hungry enough. “Mama always slept through it.”

“If she was there at all,” Mag said.

We went quiet. I’d always thought Dyl and I were the only ones who’d minded Mama’s absences, how she blithely came and went as if we didn’t need her.

We sat in our campfire circle like we had so many times before, when Mama was off on a ramble. Me, Griff, Mag, Dyl. Despite Cap’s near-constant and at times maddening silence, he had been more physically present than she had. If he knew he’d be on a garage gig, he appointed one of the twins to lead exercises. Made sure we at least had cereal or nuts for breakfast.

I swallowed at the memories, raising my beer to my father.

Mag copied me, lifting his bottle to the blue urn, and Griff and Dyl raised their canteens.

“To Cap,” Griff said solemnly.

And the three of us echoed him. “To Cap.”

***

In our hammocks later that night, we avoided mentioning the reporter, who was probably at this very moment scribbling her questions for us.

Mag, swinging himself back and forth by holding a branch, said, “Tell us about the lavender business, Ronan.”

“She goes by Ava now,” Griff reminded him.

“You can call me Ronan.” I had gotten used to it, after the initial shock of hearing my real name on the farm. It felt strange, but good. I began to rock myself as Mag was doing, gazing up at the first smattering of stars. “Well. We have four hundred acres. We produce for a local organic toiletry company. Soap, lotion, room spray. It’s great for the bee population.”

Soon I’d put everyone to sleep.

“And her family owns the farm,” Griff said, filling the others in.

I winced at her family . “The LeClairs are…good people. They…”

I pictured Lou’s father, who couldn’t be more different from Cap. Whenever people camped on a patch of his great-great-grandfather’s four hundred acres, he had his assistant dispatch them swiftly, commanding, “Handle it.” Not them , but it .

I told my brothers none of this. “They’ve been on that land for more than a century.”

“Griff tells me you haven’t dipped a toe in the water since you split,” Mag said. “Why the hell not?”

Griff sounded imperious: “Have some tact, Magnus.”

“It’s okay. I don’t mind talking about it.”

And maybe it was the dark, or the soothing whishooolleeee in the distance, but I didn’t mind.

“It wasn’t something I planned. At first it was because I’d told them I couldn’t swim. There was a beach outing on our day off, some of the younger farm pickers. That was… I was young. I’d only just arrived.”

“This is when you were seventeen?” Mag asked.

“Yes. Right after I’d hitched up.”

“Why didn’t you go on the beach outing?” Dyl asked.

I was afraid my heart would break if I saw the water and thought of you all.

“Oh. I was still keeping to myself as much as I could, those first months. I wanted that day off to be alone.” That was true, too. It had been so jarring, so overwhelming at first. Living and working with dozens of strangers after my tiny Merrick world.

I hurried on. “So I told that lie about not knowing how to swim—it just felt easier. They got this idea that I had an ocean phobia and I didn’t correct them. But I always thought I’d go to the coast. I missed it.” God, I had. I could hear the surf now, familiar and forbidden, sweeter than any drug. How to explain? “Maybe I didn’t feel like I deserved the ocean anymore.”

After I left you.

The only sounds now were the sea and the soft night wind in the leaves.

“You know what’s funny, though?” I asked, surprising myself. “I realized something on the boat today. Our lavender, it’s a blue varietal. Waves and waves of it, when it’s in bloom. And it’s beautiful. So I guess I was subconsciously finding a different ocean. The closest I could get to one, anyway.” I laughed nervously.

But this gathering wasn’t about me; it was about Cap. I stopped talking, waiting for someone else to speak.

“Hard to believe we’re doing it tomorrow,” Griff said softly. “Pouring him in the ocean.”

“It’s not really him,” Mag said. “He’d be the first to say that. No sogginess, no sentiment or superstitious talk.”

“He paddled out for other surfers two times,” Dyl observed, wise as always.

“Only out of respect,” Mag said. “He didn’t believe it meant anything.”

Mag acted like it was nothing, the paddle-out. Would he be able to maintain that fiction when we were floating in a circle, when whatever Cap had crumbled into was tipped into the Pacific? I tried to picture the scene. Us on our boards tomorrow, forming a ring. But I couldn’t.

“Will we hike down to the beach before first light?” I asked.

“Depends when our ever-punctual mother decides to return,” Mag said. He turned to Dyl. “What’s this secret project? You must know.”

“I promised I wouldn’t tell.”

Mama and her secret projects…taking her sweet time before saying hello to the daughter she hadn’t glimpsed in over a decade. She couldn’t help how she was, and maybe wanted to greet me when we could do it in private. Maybe she was shaken by Pauline Cowley’s appearance, no matter what she’d told Charlie, and needed to be alone to deal with it. But I yearned to see her.

A little rustling and shifting, then stillness. We were all lost in our private bedtime thoughts, recalling today or imagining tomorrow’s ritual, and soon we’d all be asleep feet from each other like we used to.

Swaying on the rope, lulled by birdsong and surf and the pull of the past, I did something impulsive.

I whistled.

I was still an excellent whistler. Jack and Bear, and Lou, at one time, enjoyed listening to me. I could do “Buffalo Gals” and “Goodnight, Irene.” And nothing could get ZBoy to turn from trouble faster than my sharp wolf whistle.

There was a terrible pause, and I wished I could pull the sound back from the night. Maybe it was folly to think I could so easily recreate something that had been lost.

But then Dyl responded.

Mag followed, his whistle slightly higher, a perfect middle C.

Then a longer wait. An owl hooted, a gull screeched, something skittered on the ground below. Maybe that was all I’d get.

When so much time had passed that I’d given up, Griff gave an abbreviated whistle.

In the dark, I reached up as if to catch it.

***

The next morning I woke first; it had been a long time since I’d slept in the trees. Though I kept my bedroom window open all year, and sneaked out of the farmhouse some nights to bed down on the porch.

Was this real? The surf, the smells, the diffuse light all told me it was. I was on an island with my family, and hadn’t dreamed it.

I peeked over at the three nylon cocoons which were my sleeping brothers in their mummy sacks. Griff still snored, Mag still thrashed—a wonder he hadn’t plummeted in the night, his leg was dangling over the side of his sleeping bag—and Dyl still slept as curled and quiet as a possum.

I stretched, rolled onto my stomach, looked down, and below me was a cloud of hair, unmistakable—wild and blond. Curly, as mine was when I didn’t tame it.

Mama.