Page 3 of The California Dreamers

2

Change in migration

1983

El Zafiro, California

Fourteen years old

Something is different this morning. It’s fall, a few months after my fourteenth birthday, and I sleep past dawn—the first sign.

Instead of the scrapes and clangs of Cap’s long metal spoon from the other side of my window, soft thunks on the roof wake me. Maybe we’ve parked under a coconut palm…

Outside, I squint against the morning sun. I’m used to rising in the dark, surfing so early there’s rarely anyone else on the waves. But right now, it’s bright, and there’s no fire, no Cap’s cereal or Mama’s tea. No Cap or Mama. The twins stand on the roof of the Gull—those were the noises I heard—and the sight of their tall silhouettes against the sky, their concerned stillness as they shade their eyes to peer at something down the beach, jolts me fully awake.

We’re parked not in one of our customary tree-shrouded spots, but on a weedy, narrow road. The surf is distant; we’re stopped much farther from the beach than usual.

I clamber up to join my older brothers on the roof and stand on tiptoe, straining to see what they do.

Across the dunes and trees, there’s a huge hotel, the kind we usually stay away from. Golf courses and tennis courts and a long chain of buildings with sapphire-colored tile roofs. A big, oval-shaped structure in the center, like someone flung a necklace of blue jewels onto the sand.

Overnight, we’ve flown south. I can tell from the heat, the palms and yucca bushes. The trees here are different from the central California pin oaks and poplars we parked under yesterday.

“Where are we?” I ask.

The twins don’t answer right away. They turn right as if rejecting the existence of the hotel’s deep blue roofs, gazing at the blue of the ocean and its smattering of surf breaks, already dotted with boards since we slept late.

Finally, Griff says, “A town called Almost-Mexico.” He points. “There’s a less crowded break that way. C’mon.”

“Where’s Cap?” I ask as we climb down. Mag, then Griff, then me.

Griff offers me a hand but I jump on my own.

“He’s got a garage gig nearby.”

That must be why Cap’s brought us here. Cap’s clever with his hands. He fashioned straps from old seat belts to hold our bunks against the walls of the van when we flip them up. He can make the Gull’s transmission run for another year even when some mechanic shakes his head. He can comb and wax a board perfectly, quiet the crank on our food mill with a drop of nut oil in just the right place. He knows how to pop Mag’s shoulder back in before he panics. And when we need money for food and gas, he spends a few days working at auto body shops.

Mama’s good at other things. Tinctures, and lavender soap, and cooking, and her homemade orange-and-clove salve. The names of birds and flowers. She teaches me what she knows.

“Here.” Griff hands me a tin cup of walnuts and raisins from the food bins inside the van.

Mag rolls his eyes, an expression that says I see you, acting grandiose, trying to fill in for Cap , and Griff playfully swats at him with his surf leash before they both hoist their boards and begin the long walk to the water.

I eat a few bites of what’s in the cup, saving most of it for Dyl, then go in to wake him. He’s still sleeping soundly in our shared bunk, his precious field journal, with its cover design of green kelp on a cream background, peeking out from under his pillow. It has the word Mer on the front, meaning sea in French, but I can only see the loopy seaweed-green M .

Mama found it in a thrift store long ago, and gave it to him as soon as he could hold a pencil. It’s where Dyl records his observations. Mostly about animals and plants, but sometimes us, too. I’d once glimpsed over his shoulder: “Ronan” and “my sister…” But I’d forced myself to look away without reading more.

“Dylly,” I say softly, tapping his arm. He’ll notice we’re in a strange town, and I can’t let him worry. I pull my stuffed animal, Rontu-dog, from deep under our shared covers and dance him up Dyl’s arm. “Come explore with me, Dyl. We’re in the most beautiful place…”

***

Later that day Mama and Cap return.

Cap repeats what Griff said. “Mechanic nearby pays well. They’re desperate for good help. How’s the break?”

The twins rush to answer. They talk about their waves, how good it feels to surf in November without even a half suit.

The next morning, we fall back into our routine. I peer out the window into the lavender-gray light, and Cap’s cooking his special coconut-and-date cereal over our little camp stove, the familiar scrapes and pings of his big metal spoon a comfort, though I heard him come home only a few hours ago from the garage.

I blow on Dyl’s bare elbow next to me in our bunk. “Dyyyyyyylll-y,” I whisper.

Cap says he doesn’t need somebody stirring cereal or blowing on his elbow to wake him. He says the water does it, calling to him.

I help Dyl down and we pass Mag and Griff, still asleep in their bunks, one on each long side of the van. I hurry Dyl down the road to some bushes so we can pee.

As we’re walking back he glances up and stops short. “Look,” he whispers. “Twins.”

He means two gulls. There’s a real seabird hovering above our van, and it’s somehow lined up with its wings at just the same angle as our gull’s rusty wings, like it’s showing off for us.

Cap and Mama nicknamed the van long before any of us were born, because the rusty metal shade awnings on her sides, from when she was a food truck, look like wings. Only her left wing moves now—her right is stuck a few inches up. The Gull’s painted white and pale gray, every shade, with streaks of pink marine putty on her leaks. So she even looks feathery, like a real bird.

When we get back Griff is stretching near the van’s door, and Mag is coming out, groggy and cloudy eyed. He says in a low voice so he won’t wake Mama, “The break was packed with a jillion citizens on vacation yesterday. Poor suckers.”

“Poor lost souls,” Cap says, dishing out four big servings of cereal by the stove. He must have a little cash now from his overnight garage job.

Because milk is cow snot and makes you sluggish and clumsy, we eat our cereal with water, even when we have plenty of cash in the pipe. That’s where Cap keeps our money—in the Gull’s old stovepipe, neatly wrapped packages of cash in white plastic to keep it dry. We’ve been robbed a few times because Cap doesn’t believe in guns, but no one has ever found our pipe hiding place.

Griff swallows his last bite and grins at me. His smile’s as constant as the ocean, as bright as the puka-shell necklace he always wears, so we all say, “Griff grins.”

“Griff grins,” and “Mag is only civilized on water.” And “Dyl is wise beyond his years.”

I don’t have a saying. It’s not the kind of thing you can ask for. Mama calls me Little Seal—that’s what Ronan means in Irish—but a nickname’s not the same.

We clean our tin bowls and spoons, wipe them with the rag, and set them on a towel to dry.

“You lead calisthenics,” Cap says to Griff, and heads back into the van to sleep.

Griff brings us to the sand and we line up before him in age order for sprints, squirrellies. It’s early, so both the beach and the hotel are quiet. It’s only our family and the seagulls up to appreciate the dawn.

With Cap absent, Mag modifies his own exercise form so drastically that he falls over, and we all laugh. Even Mag himself. But he’s serious again when Griff finishes with our morning promises, the words Cap has us recite every day:

“I close my eyes ’til it all drops away. What’s left is what I want.”

Then it’s time to grab our boards.

***

Our life has been the same for so many years I can’t remember anything different. Up and down the coast in the Gull.

We drive at night and park by beaches under tree cover, never too close to anyone else. I shut my eyes in San Diego and open them in San Francisco. Read Dyl a bedtime story in Chinook, Washington, and help him brush his teeth the next morning in Eureka, California. When I wake after a driving night, I lift the curtain to guess where we are, though most beaches look the same before dawn.

We follow breaks and weather and wind, and sometimes Mama tosses her arrow-shaped Marana seed pod in the air to decide north or south, laughing as it flutters down.

We never stay anywhere for more than four nights—Cap says it’s not wise and Mama says it’s not fun—and the Gull’s usual resting spots are tucked away and safe, separate from the rest of the world. We trust Tina at the bait shop in Monterey, and few others.

And yet here we are, day ten, and Cap hasn’t turned on the Gull’s ignition once. We’re still parked on the weedy road, too close to the blue hotel. The Sapphire, it’s called. Named after this little town, which we’ve learned is El Zafiro— the sapphire in Spanish.

It’s late morning and the twins and I are combing our boards together under a sweet-smelling bougainvillea. Dyl’s reading Cap’s old illustrated book on anemones. He’s a beginning surfer and would be good if he spent more time at it, but he’s more interested in other things. Wild creatures, and plants no one else notices, and the stories I invent to soothe him.

With a tooth of my balsa-wood comb, I scratch lines into the old wax on my board, one for each day we’ve been in this place, acting stuck.

Mag reads my mind. “When are we leaving? It’s been ten days, we must have gas money by now.”

“Well, when he gets back, ask him,” Griff says.

Mag scowls and I laugh, and Dyl glances up from his book, head tilted, because he doesn’t get the joke. Cap explains things on his own time, if at all.

“Seriously, why are we staying down here so long?” I ask. “That hotel’s hideous.”

“That’s why you’re always staring at it,” Mag says.

I blow wax shreds at him, but that’s all the comeback I have. The truth is, though I haven’t ventured onto its grounds, once a day I climb atop the Gull and look out at the blue chain of roofs that is the Sapphire Resort, hoping something will explain what Cap won’t—why we’re still here. I gaze down at the kidney-shaped outlines of swimming pools and the olive-and-white rectangles of tennis courts, the shocking green of the golf course winding through it all. And the dots of people everywhere. The solitary dots, and pairs and groupings of them, their busyness and stillness.

The four of us went through a brief phase, a few years ago, when after surfing we’d gone on long walks from the Gull’s hiding place to explore beach hotels. We’d even fished change from their elegant fountains, reasoning that it wasn’t stealing, before Cap found out.

“They are empty places for empty people,” Cap had said, when he realized what we’d been doing. “They spend hundreds of dollars to distract themselves from their emptiness.”

We haven’t done it since. And yet he’s parked us here, adjacent to what he abhors. Maybe it’s a test. He wants to know we will turn our backs on it. And maybe I’m failing.

“We’ve broken our rule about only staying places four nights,” Dyl says now. He observes this as plainly as if he’s reading statistics from one of his nature books. “And this is the third morning since we came here Cap didn’t do cereal or morning exercises.”

I exchange a look with Griff. I’ve done my best to distract Dyl, who’s caught on to our confusion about how long this garage gig has lasted, how all-consuming it seems to be compared with Cap’s others, and who misses Mama. She’s been off on one of her long rambles nearly this whole time. That’s what we call it when Mama’s away—“she’s on a ramble.” She rarely tells us where she’s going, although sometimes she returns with clues, from the items she’s bartered, or flowers for Dyl and I to press.

Griff teases Dyl, “You want to do some squirrellies for me instead?”

Dyl shakes his head and returns to his book.

It goes quiet except for the sound of us running our balsa-wood combs up and down. Sccccch, sccccch, fffshhhh, fffshhhh . Every once in a while, someone brushes off old wax and ripply ribbons fly toward the sun.

“He’s saving cash for winter,” Griff says. “I don’t mind. I had a perfect morning.”

Though I wouldn’t have called it perfect, because I was distracted, wondering why we’re staying here so long, I’d managed to find a few moments of peace on the water.

“The swell at Zuma’s been killer,” Mag says. “I overheard some men talking in the lineup. If we don’t go soon maybe I’ll hitch up.”

Griff and I smile.

Mag’s all talk. He’d never go off alone.

***

The twins and I return to surf until the sun’s high, unusual for us, but it’s better on the water than the crowded beach or the weedy road by the hotel.

There’s a boy in the lineup I’ve never noticed before. He’s good on his red-striped short board. So good that Mag and Griff check him out, too, all three of us emitting invisible waves of interest. He’s tall, with slick black hair and sharp shoulders, an unusual pop-up. It’s fluid, and so late it’s suspenseful.

I stay out long after my sore arms begin to protest, and my brothers do, too; I can tell they’re tired. But the new kid’s presence is infectious. He swerves and dips with blasé precision, taking what’s his without ever dropping in on somebody and stealing their ride.

I’ve never been a show-off, but for some reason I need this new boy to know my cutbacks are as sweet as his. I take a little hip-high wave that no one else wants and make the most of it, bouncing my board up and down to prolong the ride, diving off at the end, extending my body, imagining I am an arrow from my fingertips to my toes. Cap once said I’m a good diver. But if he knew I was trying to impress this stranger, he’d regret complimenting me.

Late in the session I luck out and a chest-high presents itself twenty feet behind like it formed just for me. It’s big enough to wash every thought away. But when I resurface after, climbing back onto my board, I can’t help but check stealthily; the kid’s watching from far off.

An hour later, he floats near us, straddling his board, and nods at me. “Hey,” he calls.

Griff, next to me, doesn’t need to say it—that’s a signal to head in. One syllable from the boy, but it might as well be a prolonged alarm bell. We don’t interact with strangers unless absolutely necessary. A rule I’ve known since before I could speak.

I turn and paddle half-heartedly toward shore, but can’t resist a glance over my shoulder. The boy tilts his head at me, puzzled by my snub.

“Ronan,” Griff says.

After one last glance, I follow after my brothers.

***

“What was his deal?” Mag asks Griff as the three of us lug our boards across the hot sand toward the Gull. Despite all his big talk of hitching up to Zuma, Mag is quick to heed Cap’s rule against interacting with citizens unless absolutely necessary.

Citizens. That’s what Cap calls people who stay put, who have regular jobs. Who go to school. When he’s feeling sorry for them, Cap calls them SSNs. Social Security Numbers. When I was little, I used to think he was saying “assassins.”

“I think that citizen was flirting with Ro,” Mag adds with a smirk.

Griff asks: “What did he say to you? Just ‘Hi’?”

I nod, not correcting him. It was “Hey,” Griff. How my big brothers would laugh if I made that distinction. They’d laugh at me, and at the new boy, and I couldn’t bear that.

When we return to the Gull, Mama’s back from her week-long ramble. She’s preparing dinner on a new blanket, traded for her soap and tins of herbal balm. The cloth is purple with a beautiful gold paisley design, and she’s spread it out over the gravel like an island, a bright oval atop the sad little utility road. The cloth is much bigger and brighter than the everyday Goodwill checked blanket we usually sit on for family meals.

She’s baking potatoes on our camp stove—eight of them. Two apiece for the twins, who are growing tall and ravenous? There’s a huge salad, and rice with her spicy cashew sauce, and a frying-pan strawberry-honey tart. It’s a feast, for us.

“What’s all this?” Mag asks.

“Oh, I just thought a treat would be nice.” But there’s a mischievous look in her green eyes. “Ro, would you wipe two more plates and take the extra chairs down from the rack?”

I untie the chairs from the roof and unfold them. Eight potatoes, not six. Two extra plates, two extra chairs… And then I hear a laugh. Three figures walk up the road toward us. Cap and two others.

Dyl tenses and Mama says, “It’s only Bassett and his kid, Dylly. I shouldn’t have teased like that, but we have so few surprises, don’t you think?”

“Bassett!” Griff says.

Mama nods. “He wrote your father at the bait shop weeks ago to set our meeting place, but put south utility road and there isn’t a south one so he’s been driving around looking for us… Isn’t that funny? What if we’d missed each other?”

“You could’ve just told us,” Mag says. But even he can’t sound too grouchy about it.

Bassett is Cap’s oldest friend, I guess his only real friend, but he mostly stays in New Mexico because he doesn’t surf anymore. He’s one of the people who writes us letters via the bait shop in Monterey.

But I never knew Bassett had a child.

So this is why we’ve lingered here so long.

The figures are closer now and I can make out Bassett’s round shape, Cap’s lanky one, and the tall kid from before in between. Black hair. Angular shoulders. Walk as easy and confident as his surf style.

Mama strides down the road to greet them, her red hair and long white skirt fluttering.

I tell the twins, “I’m going to calm Dyl down.” While our attention was on our visitors, Dyl has scurried inside the Gull. When I enter, I’m grateful for the refuge of our home, where every object, every rattle and cough and contour in the night is familiar.

I don’t see Dyl at first. I look everywhere—up in Cap and Mama’s bunk, behind the library. Then there’s a thump and a shuffling-around noise behind me and I check our bunk. I swear it was the first place I looked, but there he is, burrowed under the covers, pretending to sleep.

I climb up and join him, curling around his body’s lower-case c with my big C . I draw invisible waves on his back with my index finger, something I invented to comfort him. I even used Cap’s old awl to carve waves in our wooden bunk base, so he can run his fingers along them if he gets anxious.

Over and over, I trace slopes and W ’s and V ’s, hills and valleys, over the thick blanket. I can’t rush Dyl when he’s like this.

“Who’s Bassett Andiskid?” Dyl asks, his voice muffled.

“Bassett and his kid. He’s all right, Dylly. You met Bassett when you were teeny, and we trust him.”

“I don’t remember him.”

I pretend I remember more than I do, to calm Dyl. “He lives in New Mexico. He has a big beard, and long dark hair, and geodes on his dashboard, fool’s gold and anthracite and amethyst. And his Winnebago van has beautiful wolves painted on the side. And he can tell you all about Hawai’i, the flowers and birds…”

Bassett’s laugh booms through the windows, and Dyl, who was just starting to relax, tenses again. There’s a knock on the wall by Mag’s bunk. Not a cop’s rap-rap-rap-rap-rap but Bassett patting her right wing in a friendly way. “Old gal’s looking good,” he says.

“He’s loud,” Dyl whispers.

Bassett is loud, like he doesn’t worry about anyone noticing him. He once knelt to say into my ear, winking and cupping his hand to his mouth though he hadn’t lowered his voice a decibel, “Your dad is the best surfer I’ve ever known, but your mama’s probably even better than him except she’s a solo rider so I’ve never seen her.”

“We’ll get used to it, together. What’d you say we go out just for a few minutes to see how you feel? Dyl?”

No answer.

“Where’d you learn to surf like that?” Cap asks Bassett’s kid. “Not from your dad.”

So Cap had been watching us, from shore or another break. Watching me sneak a last glance at the boy. The possibility makes me flush.

“Can just us two have a picnic somewhere instead?” Dyl whispers.

I wish. And I wish Bassett the Second wasn’t so good. I wish he was a replica of his father, goofy and clumsy on a wave.

“It’ll be okay,” I tell Dyl. “I’ll trace secret waves on your back.”

“And I’ll do it for you. And I’ll bring a book for each of us.” He picks out Island of the Blue Dolphins for me, and I wait patiently while he climbs up to the big front bunk to pick out his book from our library wall, the stack of books that divides Cap and Mama’s bunk from the rest of the Gull.

I know he’s procrastinating up there, behind the vanilla wall, named because the spines of the books face the front of the van, and all that’s visible to us are the creamy pages. From the kids’ side of the van the wall is the exact color of vanilla ice cream sold on the piers.

Dyl descends the ladder without a book and instead pulls his field journal from under his pillow. Not technically a book , but I understand. He finds comfort in re-reading old entries and looking at his flower pressings and the botanical diagrams he’s drawn.

My hands shake as I comb Dyl’s hair and help him dress, but why should I care how this introduction goes? Mag and Griff will scoop up this new boy, now that we know he’s safe, and claim him for their own, show him all our secret breaks.

When Dyl and I join everyone—Dyl hugging my Island and his field journal to his chest like armor and clinging to my side—no one notices us at first.

I look to Mama, who helped plan this linkup. That’s what we call it when a meetup lasts more than a day or two. It means traveling in a convoy, parking near each other at night. We never do it, or at least haven’t since that long-ago time with Bassett, though others who live like us do it all the time—I’ve seen them.

But Mama is preoccupied with our guests, and Mag and Griff are standing on the road a little apart from the others, still in their short-sleeved wet suits. I wish I still had on mine, too, that my hair was still wet. I feel like a waitress in my embroidered apron dress.

“That grown-up beauty can’t be Ronan!” Bass booms.

“It is,” Cap says in a hearty voice I don’t remember ever hearing.

“Well, pleased to see you, Ronan. Even if your old dad can’t follow simple instructions. We’ve been trying to find you for days . I never imagined you’d park so close to the hotel.” Bass is the only person allowed to tease Cap like this.

“There is no south utility road, Bass. Would you care to see your letter?”

“The hotel’s expanded since I’ve been here.”

“Ah, yes,” Cap says disapprovingly. “The chain of sapphires grows ever longer. Well, I’m glad we found you at last…”

As our fathers banter back and forth, the twins finally approach the boy. He’s backlit by the dropping sun, so I can only make out his dripping wet suit, drenched dark hair. Griff collects himself enough to play the host, asking about his past surf haunts. And Mag waits attentively for his answers, guarded yet unable to contain his interest.

But the kid ignores my brothers, steps off the cheerful purple blanket, and comes right up to me and Dyl.

“Saw you out there this morning.” His hand is still wet and cool from the ocean as I place mine in it. He offers a little nod. He means, “You’re good.” You never tell someone that outright. If you say “Nice four-footer you spotted” or “Looks like you had fun out there today,” that means you’re terrible.

The kid’s hand goes from mine straight up, back to his neck zipper, and then it all seems to happen at once. Hand behind the long neck, oversize wet suit peeled down to the waist, long, wavy black hair shaken out, a strapless bathing suit top that’s too small, almost like a bandage but far from flat, hips that curve out even more, all of these surprising lines silhouetted by the sun.

My brothers go quiet.

Bassett’s kid is a girl.

“Easier out there this way sometimes,” she says. She shrugs, then smiles. “I’m Charlie.”