This is how I will begin everything. Simple and unadorned. I have no need for ornaments to tell this story. I mean for this to be standard.
There is an unknown shore on the Western coastline. Unknown because no footprints slowly dissolve in the weak surf. There is a boat, however, as unknown as the shore, tied to a rotting wood post, the remnants of a forgotten dock. The sky over the water is a pale grey and covered in a quilt of sea mist. The ocean is calm here because a sand bar two hundred yards out has created a lagoon. The water gently laps at the shore. It rolls timidly, a miniature model of roaring waves some distance to the north or south. Stiff bubbles form a yellow sea foam which lingers for a moment, leaving its skeleton as the water recedes only to be washed away and left again as the water languidly floats back. The sand where these foam skeletons are left is mud, tacky and drenched. As it retreats from the water’s edge, it dries and is coarse, like gravel, a dull yellow, peppered with brown and blue stones. The gentle but constant wind has created small, shallow waves across the surface. Wild grass sprouts up, sparsely at first, but as it thickens, it becomes lost in the density of the trees. The sand disappears into soft soil. These are Douglas firs, mostly. They are ancient. They form a band four or five miles deep, until they begin to roll on the hills like the waves of the sea. The trees fade back to wild grass on the hills. There are no paths here. There is no way to navigate. The modest hills stretch back from the trees for two miles dotted with distant and ancient oaks. The hills retreat into plain, like waves calming on the surface of the sea. The wild grass blends into poppies and eventually disappears.
Poppies and poppies and poppies.
Yes, and this is where Autumn Le lay on her back, her eyes wide, watching the sky. This is where I imagine her beginning.
Among flowers.
The flowers look rotoscoped, their vibrant colors animated in the sunlight. And Autumn Le also looks only partially real. She is in fact my character. My character I do not control nor wish to. I never have. No, I will wind Autumn Le up, and I will let her go. I will watch her march across the page with purpose and conviction.
“Are you watching?” Sam asks her.
“Hmm?”
“It’s almost four.”
“Oh,” Autumn sighs wistfully.
Sam lay among the flowers too. His head touches hers slightly, legs pointed in the opposite direction. They are the hand of a compass pointing east and west.
“Shall we then?” he asks her.
“I suppose we shall.”
Autumn rolls over on her stomach. The back of her summer dress has flower petals and a few leaves of grass stuck to it. They blend in almost unnoticeably with the pattern of the dress. Sam rolls too meeting Autumn’s eyes with his own. She smiles sideways at him and hoists herself to her feet. She reaches down to pick up her camera. She snaps a lazy picture of Sam.
“How many of those do you need?”
“As many as I want.”
“I guess you’ll have something to remember me someday.”
He smiles.
The two walk hand in hand back to his car parked alongside the highway.
* * *
June straightens the pok-a-dot ribbon in her golden hair. It is red and white silk. Her lipstick matches. Her face is smooth like a porcelain doll and has the complexion of one. She takes her light blue eye shadow and applies it carefully so as not to over do it. Just a light dusting. An airbrushing.
She looks like glass.
Her breasts small and barely perceptible; her clothes made for a child. She doesn’t notice. She smooths out her shirt, which is stark white. It is skintight across her chest and under her bosom, and then flows out like a small dress. It hides how thin she really is.
She walks to the bedroom where she finds shoes that match her lipstick and ribbon. The small television is playing Access Hollywood. Casey is in the living room and asks June to turn it down. His ratty, white v-neck is so thin his tattoos are nearly completely visible beneath it. In the middle of his chest is a grenade. Above that, along his collarbone are these words:
Vita Palma Evanui, Ita Vadum Ego
Casey is half laying in the corner of the couch, one foot propped up on the formica coffee table. The table is covered with copies of Cosmo, Seventeen, Vogue, TV Guide and other such material. There are stacks of back issues piled all around the room and in the closets and in the kitchen and in the bathroom. He is flipping through a copy of Life magazine, studying each page very carefully. The cover of the magazine says this:
100 PLACES TO SEE IN YOUR LIFETIME
He is not reading the descriptions, only studying the large, full color photographs, as if looking for someone. He is looking at a picture of a lighthouse in Maine when June comes dancing into the room.
“Are we ready?” Casey says.
“Sure. Just a minute”
“It’s nearly six.”
“I know.”
“So?”
“Just one second.”
June picks up a copy of Cosmo and flips to one of the many dog eared pages where a large picture of a blonde actress winks back at her, red ribbon in her hair, red shoes on her feet. June runs back to the bathroom and holds the picture up to the mirror, trying to look at herself and herself at the same time.
Close, she thinks.
Casey is still on the couch in a trance. June hops over the back of it and lands on top of him.
“Dude, you’re boney,” he says to her, eyes still on the page.
“You b*****d!” she shouts, playfully smacking him on the arm. He puts the magazine down and grabs her wrist, gently but with enough force to remind her. He smiles, and she leans in to kiss him.
“Come on,” he says. “Autumn and Sam will be waiting for us.”
“Let them wait,” June whispers.
“No,” Casey insists. “Let’s go.”
June moans slightly and rolls off the couch. The two of them step off the curb onto the street. Casey is wearing wooden clogs. They clop on the pavement.
“I wish you wouldn’t wear those,” June says to him.
“They’re the most comfortable shoes I own.”
* * *
The VFW Hall in Cambria has a small group of hipsters and scene kids standing outside. Sam and Autumn Le stand at the corner, apart from them, her camera around her neck. They are waiting for the doors to open. They, along with everyone else, smoke. Sam’s cigarettes are unfiltered Pall Mall’s, fashionable and dangerous. Autumn smokes Camel Lights. The VFW is veiled in a thin mist.
Casey and June approach from across the street. June waves frantically at Autumn like a ten year old girl who is seeing a friend again after a long summer vacation. Autumn Le waves back.
“Hey, June!” someone shouts from the crowd. “You make it to Hollywood yet? You get your big break?”
A few cackles issue from the group.
“Hey, Mick, why don’t you shut the f**k up, you f*****g f****t,” Casey shouts back.
“Whatever, dude,” the faceless voice says.
Autumn and Sam look mournful.
June casts her eyes to the ground.
“C’mere Sweetheart,” Autumn says to June, moving her camera to the side and putting her arms around her. “Don’t listen to that a*****e,” she whispers in June’s ear.
* * *
The VFW is a brick building one block over from Main Street, downtown Cambria. The interior looks like an elementary school cafeteria. The floor, waxed wood. The ceiling, perforated tile. A low stage with a blue, velvet curtain takes up the wall opposite the door. To the right, the ceiling is lowered to act as a sound dampener, preventing sound from the stage from echoing. Below this ceiling, along the wall are stacks of metal folding chairs and large, round and rectangular wooden tables.
One of the rectangular tables is set up at the entrance. Three dollars to get in.
“Who’s on the bill?” Sam asks the high school girl behind the table.
“Um, Horse Head in Jackie’s Bed, T**d Fergeson, and, uh, Sweet Thang?”
“Okay,” June says sarcastically.
The four of them lean against the back wall, arms crossed, looking very serious and very over the whole scene. But they come to every show anyway.
Autumn Le scans the room. She takes a few pictures. No one will question her. Small clusters of scenesters stand around, trying to block everyone else from their self-important world. When the bands play, these groups get pushed to the edge of the room and a large circle forms in the middle where other kids flail their arms and legs and run around until their faces are red and they are drenched in sweat. Tomorrow they will all mow the lawn, they will work the cash register, they will walk the streets, they will run through the woods, they will dive in the sea, they will dream.
Autumn Le is not one of these. She believes her small world is not a part either. They meet here, late on a Saturday, because they know already. Her universe knows. She knows all that life has got in store. They don’t need to be one of those circles. There is nothing that a circle in the middle of the VFW can offer them.
* * *
It is very late now on a Saturday. Autumn Le sits on the couch in Sam’s apartment. His head is in her lap, and he snores quietly. They are watching movies made about outer space. Autumn runs her fingers through Sam’s hair. She watches the spaceship travel into the void. Toward the stars.
We’re going to the stars, she thinks to herself.
They are always traveling closer and closer. The cold, bright light wrapping them up. Autumn Le cannot imagine the possibility of anything else occurring. I must confess that I too am having that same difficulty. As I always have. Autumn Le is boarding her rocket ship, and she knows that she will take her universe with her. It cannot be any other way.
* * *
Casey is rubbing his finger along June’s arm. It is remarkable to him how smooth she is. Like glass, he thinks. She looks at him and winks. He has his head in her lap, her arm around his neck while she sits on the couch and watches Extra!.
“If I go to Hollywood, will you come with me?” she asks suddenly.
“And watch all the guys there put their hands on you? No thanks.”
“No, but seriously.” She begins to choke up. “I just. I really want to. I really want that.”
“Want what?”
“I want to go to the stars. I’m going to be someone. Don’t you want to come with me? Don’t you want me to go? Don’t you see what I do?”
“Let’s just stay here,” Casey says.
June pushes his head off of her lap.
“I’m going,” she says, “with or without you.”
* * *
Autumn Le wakes up on Sam’s couch. Sam is on the floor. It is early on a Sunday now. She shivers in the morning mist. They left the window open, and the dew from the sea has crept in, wetting everything.
“Sammy,” Autumn groans.
“Hmph,” Sam replies, face in the shag carpet.
“The window.”
“Errrrrrrmmmmm.”
“Let’s go swimming today.”
“Kayfffff.”
Autumn sits up on the couch, yawns, and stretches, and throws one of the cushions onto Sam’s back.
“Call Casey,” she says.
* * *
June is at the mirror again.
“It’s just gonna come off as soon as you get in,” Casey shouts from the living room.
“So?”
“So, why are we wasting time worrying about that, when we could be there already?” he asks, standing now in the bathroom door.
“Because maybe I don’t want to go in. Maybe I just want to sit on the side and watch. I like just watching.”
“You and your watching.”
“You’re not going to wear those stupid wood shoes there, are you?”
“Why not?”
“Because they’re going to make your feet all musty and gross. And they’ll probably rot if they get too wet.”
Casey looks at his clogs, sitting by the front door. They are a pale, grayish brown, smooth with thin, straight cracks running through the tops. He doesn’t know where they came from originally. He found them on the beach.
June emerges from the bathroom, tying her hair in a messy ponytail. She wears a two-piece bathing suit with a wrap around her waist. She is pale, but in a stunning way that leaves no desire in Casey for her body to be any darker. It would ruin her, Casey thinks.
* * *
Santa Rosa Creek divides Cambria in two, though not in the way the Thames, Arno, or Danube divide medieval cities of Europe. The town proper lay to the south, and to north of the creek is Cambria Pines, a community of tourists and recluses, much smaller, but far wealthier than Cambria. Arthur Harold Beal also known as Der Tinkerpaw and Captain Nitt Witt, most likely the most famous person to live there, bought property at 881 Hillcrest Drive in 1928. Being one of the recluses and not one of the tourists, he built his house and began carving the hillside it sat atop, creating terraces like the old medieval citadels. He wanted his own. He did it completely by himself over the next fifty years. With a pick axe and a shovel. He named his citadel Nitt Witt Ridge.
And so it is to this day.
The plaque that designates Arthur Harold Beal’s citadel a historic landmark reads thus:
Nitt Witt Ridge, one of California's remarkable twentieth-century folk-art environments, is the creation of Arthur Harold Beal (Der Tinkerpaw, or Capt. Nitt Witt), a Cambria Pines pioneer who sculpted the land using hand tools and indigenous materials, inventiveness and self-taught skills. A blend of native materials and contemporary elements, impressive in its sheer mass and meticulous placement, it is a revealing memorial to Art's cosmic humor and zest for life. California Registered Historical Landmark No. 939. Plaque placed by the State Department of Parks and Recreation in cooperation for saving and preserving arts and cultural environments with the Art Beal Foundation, non-profit and educational corporation. June 26, 1986.
But Captain Nitt Witt had no interest in being a pioneer or a sculptor or the creator of a folk-art environment. He was crazy as a loon and hated people almost more than he hated himself. He built his house out of whatever he could find: aluminum cans, iron stoves, abalone shells, pieces of Hearst’s Castle that he stole while he worked there. Yes, Hearst’s Castle. Now there was a true American citadel. If there were any claim to fame Captain Nitt Witt sought, it was to create a citadel to rival that of Hearst, Winchester, and other Californian recluses and sociopaths. He wished to be the greatest sociopathic architect of the 20th century.
From Nitt Witt Ridge, Der Tinkerpaw could see Santa Rosa Creek, though it is many miles to the south, which is one of the reasons he chose the location he did. The trees on its banks are yellow, if they survived the bitter frost of winter, or bare if they did not. But the trees further away, the pines, those are green and vibrant and tall. There are redwoods and sequoias, living giants, timeless. They reach ever upward. Everyone’s gaze seems to be drawn toward the sky.
* * *
It is bright now on a Sunday. The filtered light makes its way through the towering branches to the soft bed of dead needles below, making warm white spots on the ground amidst the cool shade. There is no trail to Santa Rosa Creek from the road where Sam has parked his car. But they know the way. They grew up learning the path.
The four of them run to a part of the creek where rocks have created a natural dam that has caused a bend in the creek to form a deep pool. Short cliffs rise up around it. The tops of the cliffs look bare from the shore. There are trees, but only after yards of rock and sporadic grass. The creek is calm here and is unknown to the tourists of Cambria Pines. One of the last sacred places in California. They call this place The Garden of Eden.
Casey hops across the rock dam, slips on one in the middle, and falls backward into the pool. Sam runs in after him. Autumn Le and June spread their towels out on one of the large shore boulders in the sun. Autumn Le has left her camera behind today. The boulders are smooth, sandy, and warm. The girls lay on their stomachs watching the boys dunk each other in the middle of the pool. They are the only ones here.
“Come on!” Casey shouts at the girls.
They both shake their heads.
“I thought you wanted to swim,” Sam shouts at Autumn.
“In a bit.”
Casey and Sam look at each other and swim to the shore. The sand is hot on their feet. They run to the rocks.
“Don’t!” June warns. “I don’t want my towel to get all wet.”
“C’mon, June,” Autumn says. “So they don’t drag us in.”
“I will when I’m ready.”
Autumn steps cautiously into the pool as Sam and Casey run back in. They immediately turn around and send waves of cold water her way. She shrieks and runs in after them, swimming onto Casey’s shoulders to dunk him under for a minute before turning to swim in Sam’s direction, but he is on one of the cliff faces, fifteen feet above the water. He does a cannonball right next to Autumn, splashing water up her nose. She coughs, but laughs at the same time, and continues to swim after him. The three of them climb on the dam, jump into the pool, slide down the rocks to a shallower, wider bend in the creek. They forget the time.
* * *
“Where’d June go?” Autumn asks, looking back to the rocks.
“I’m up here!”
Autumn, Casey, and Sam look for the source of her voice. They spot her on the cliff. At the top, at the edge, not on a ledge in the middle of it like Sam was.
“June, what the hell are you doing?” Casey yells.
“I’m coming in!” she sings.
“Has she ever done this before?” Sam asks Casey.
“No—Hey, June. Come down. Don’t jump from that high.”
“I think I can see Nitt Witt Ridge from up here!”
“June, just come down. I really—“
“I’m not going to jump, idiot,” June says. “I just wanted to see what things looked like from up here. Seriously, I can see Nitt Witt Ridge, right over there.”
The August wind picks up. It comes from the sea through the forest. It is salty and cool.
“June!” Casey screams.
The wind is blowing harder now, but not with the gale force one would expect to accompany certain tragedy. But it is enough to lift June off her feet. No one knew how light she had become. She floats.
She laughs.
“I’m flying! Do you see, Casey? Do you see?”
The wind slows to a breeze, and then stills, as sea breezes sweeping across the pines often do.
June falls.
She is silent, and so are Sam, Casey, and Autumn. They watch her. She does not fall with a speed that one would expect from a body falling through space, but it is fast enough. It is not soft. When she lands on the warm boulder below, more than half buried in sand, her body shatters.
Like glass.
The pieces sparkle in the sun and fade into languor.
Casey pushes Autumn and Sam out of the way, sprints and stumbles to the boulder. He begins collecting the pieces, cutting his feet on June.
“Casey,” Autumn whispers, now behind him. “You can’t.”
“Don’t tell me,” he whispers. “Don’t you f*****g tell me.”
Sam, still silent, begins to help Casey.
“Sam,” Autumn whispers again.
“We have to,” he mumbles.
Casey has collected an armful now, and each piece he adds forces another out. These disappear into the sand, are swallowed. June is cutting Casey’s chest. He sees these pieces disappear and frantically tries to dig them back out with his feet. He stumbles again and drops all he is holding into the sand. Those pieces of June disappear. Sam watches this happen. He drops his pieces into the sand.
“No,” Casey screams, hoarse and bleeding.
Autumn Le watches this too. She takes her towel and June’s, both embedded with pieces of glass, and shakes them out onto the sand. She uses them to sweep the remaining pieces onto the sand. Casey makes a motion to stop her at first, he moves forward, arms out, but simply falls backward to sit in the sand. He sighs deeply. Again. Again. The water continues to bubble over the rocks. Autumn is afraid to speak. She wants to. She wants to say something perfect to Casey. But she cannot. The words simply don’t come. She wishes Sam would. But Sam sits on the boulder in the same upright fetal position that Casey is in.
“We’ll never come back here again,” Casey says.
* * *
Thunderstorms are rare on the coast. But they do occur. They also typically carry very little precipitation, so fires from lightning strikes are frequent during these storms. The cool maritime air from the sea meets the warm coming over the hills from the Mojave Desert. When they converge, they create an updraft, which pushes the clouds higher and higher, creating monstrous, black formations with white heads. The low humidity allows for a higher level of static electricity. More lightning.
It is getting late on a Monday.
Casey is listening to the thunder pound the air outside. He is slowly burning magazines, page by page. There is a pile of ashes around the table. It is climbing onto the couch. He is sitting in it. All of what made June is now ash. He tries to burn the ash, but it merely blows around and away from the heat of the flame. He wants more to burn. Her clothes are gone. Her shoes. Those took a while. There is one thing he has not burned yet. He is not exactly sure why. It should have been first. It should have been first and all at once, one motion, lighter to thin paper, stomped out, obliterated, decimated, turned to less than ash, vanished. Erased wholly and completely from memory. He comes to the copy of Life magazine. He flips through slowly, not really contemplating each page, just looking. He stops at the lighthouse in Maine. He begins by burning that page.
He didn’t see, he didn’t see.
I didn’t see it, June.
He’s burned everything but the apartment and its furniture now. He stands up, smeared in grey soot, and walks to the kitchen. He takes two forks and puts them in his pocket. Before he leaves for the last time, he smashes both TVs. Not in a sensational way. He simply pushes them off the stands onto their faces. As he walks out the door, it begins to rain. It never rains during thunderstorms here, but now it is raining harder than he has ever remembered. It makes him furious because it adds too much drama. But there is nothing he can do. He can’t tell it to stop. He walks to the carport that he and June never used. But there is a gas can. It is three gallons and a rusting red. He carries it to the station on Main Street, pays the attendant cash, and fills up the can. He is walking in his clogs. The rain forms puddles at his toes. His feet squeak on the wet wood and occasionally slip out.
* * *
He continues to walk down Main Street, which, aside from the Pacific Coast Highway, connects Cambria and Cambria Pines. He turns onto Santa Rosa Creek Road and walks northeast. He walks until he comes to an open field.
He moves through the tall grass until he is away from any of the stray oaks. He is on top of a short hill. Casey opens the gas can and pours the contents onto his head. He opens his mouth and lets some of the gasoline slip down his throat. It burns, and he chokes. When the last drops have left the can, he takes the forks out of his pocket and holds them apart at arms length.
* * *
Autumn Le mourns. But she is not surprised. She mourns for Sam because he wouldn’t understand. They worry about Casey. They should see him. They should be with him at all times until this passes.
* * *
As static builds over a low hill off of Santa Rosa Creek Road, the air warms slightly. It is suddenly so dry, despite the pouring rain. Casey feels his skin tickle slightly as it dries for a second.
The discharge produced is immense. It begins in Casey’s feet, in his clogs. It travels to his arms and out the forks he holds in his hands and dissipates in the clouds above. He is not holding the forks for more than a thousandth of a second. His body is reduced to dust and returns to the earth.
* * *
Autumn Le is home now. Her studio apartment on Tully Place is a modest five hundred square feet. She has a couch, which is also her bed with a small table in front of it. That is her only furniture. She has no television. She has no dining table or chairs. Her closet has only a few pairs of clothing. The rest of the space is taken up by camera equipment. Screens and tripods and boxes of film and developing tanks and Ilfosol S-developer and Rapid Fixer and wetting agent and steel film clips and mix-up cups and this and that. Her apartment is also her darkroom.
But she is not developing pictures today. She does not want to develop the roll that is in her camera right now. Instead, she looks at her walls. Her walls are covered with framed pictures. Of Casey and June and Sam. Of them at the VFW hall. Of them at the beach. Of them at Nitt Witt Ridge of them at The Garden of Eden of them visitng Los Angeles of them of them of them. She half expects June to be gone from the pictures, faded from history like in Back to the Future. But she is still there.
* * *
Autumn looks at a picture she took of Casey’s collarbone. He is stretching back the collar of one of his v-neck shirts to reveal his tattoo only a month or so old. The redness and the scabs had just healed. The light in the photograph is bluish, cold, the background, some bushes along the sidewalk, completely out of focus, the leaves becoming hundreds of orbs various shades of green.
“Vita palma evanui,” Autumn reads aloud.
We knew she wouldn’t read the rest.
* * *
“Casey is gone,” Sam tells Autumn.
It is early on a Tuesday.
“Where?”
“Gone.”
Sam can barely get the word out. He sits on Autumn’s couch, head down slightly, hands folded between his legs.
“Their apartment was full of ash,” Sam says. “The TVs smashed. Only the furniture.” He stops. He can’t say anymore.
“How?”
“We’ll never know. But he’s gone. Gone, gone.”
“You don’t—”
“He’s gone, Autumn.”
Sam turns his soaked face to her. She knows what he wants to say. But she can’t explain. She feels apart. She is no longer in this universe.
* * *
Sam stands up from the couch. He turns to Autumn but doesn’t speak.
“Don’t, Sam,” she whispers.
He runs.
For a brief moment, Autumn is frozen. She doesn’t want to believe that she won’t be able to catch him.
* * *
Autumn Le can see Sam ahead of her. They are running at equal speed. They reach the northwestern edge of town, the Pacific Coast Highway. Here is where the flowers begin.
* * *
They run through the flowers. Wild grass and foxtails begins to sprout. The hills start to roll like waves. They are full of motion. Ancient oaks appear sporadically like distant buoys on the surf. The cloud of dust and flower petals and grass Sam and Autumn Le are leaving behind is immense.
* * *
The hills subside again as oaks become pines and thicken into a forest. This forest is unknown to both of them. But they keep running, dodging trees, jumping over rocks. They know it is not endless. The ever increasing mist tells them it must end soon.
* * *
The density of the trees is traded briefly for the density of more wild grass. But this is different from the foxtails of the hills miles behind them. This is sea grass.
* * *
Their pace slows tremendously as they reach the coast. Their feet dig into the sand disrupting its ripples. This beach is no longer unknown.
* * *
And as Sam reaches the mud, tacky, drenched, the foam skeletons of the break sticking to it, Autumn stops. She wants to call out. “Where will you go?” she wants to ask. She walks now.
* * *
Sam is swimming. He saw the boat from shore. He saw the stars. He is getting on his rocket ship.
* * *
And Autumn Le watches him board. He disappears into the mist almost immediately. Two strokes, and he is gone.
* * *
Autumn Le stands still for a moment longer before she begins moving in reverse. She starts slowly at first, one step and then another. She is still facing the sea as her legs take her back. Back through the sand and sea grass and trees. Her movements are choppy. She is taking giant leaps back. But she is not going backward. The mist dissipates, and the sunlight is scattered again through the needles. She exits the forest, is moving over the hills. She watches the pines disappear from sight. The grass gets thinner, the hills flatten and turn back to poppies.
Poppies and poppies and poppies.
Autumn Le lifts off the ground.
She is leaving here. It is possible that she never actually belonged. She thinks that to herself. She can see now out over the forest, over the mist to the horizon. She thinks that Sam is—no, he can’t be. It isn’t possible. The flowers shrink and become one color, pink and red and white and yellow and orange and green all at the same time. She waves and wishes she had her camera.
![[send message]](https://www.writerscafe.org/images/mail.png){kind=small}
![[befriend]](https://www.writerscafe.org/images/friend.png){kind=small}
Share This
Email
Facebook
Twitter
Read Request
My Library
Flag Writing
