37

I climbed high into the hills. Motorcycles had cut scars in the landscape. Rusting equipment loomed, chains and iron wheels scattered behind barbed wire. I plucked at the barbed coils, slipping through.

I felt my way downward, across a cliff face of glossy, green serpentine, into an old quarry. Rail tracks led upward to the base of a cliff, and then stopped, and the man-made canyon had that profound quiet of industry left to decay.

I was hoping for a mine shaft, and had entertained the thought of finding a cave. But as dawn approached I had to be satisfied with one of the fissures in the cliff, cracks that stretched deep into the stone. I crept into the dark, not certain what form my body would take as I hid farther into the hill, whether human, or winged, or some new disguise I did not want to name.

When I woke I fed again.

This time I found a community of new houses, sod still rolled up like carpets, bare ground and huge boxes at the curb for recycling, the flattened cardboard that had contained refrigerators, stoves.

I embraced a woman sitting on a brand-new patio set, blue canvas directors chairs, an iron table. She was half-turned to look inside, a stereo rumbling, a song I would have known in my other, human life. She was smoking a cigarette, the heat of her spiced with nicotine, the last words she spoke a laughing, “Stop it. I told you stop it,” trying to guess. Trying to name which friend I was, until she was silent.

In my man-like guise I threaded a path through a bank of iceplants, the succulents in flower, a carpet of blossoms. Highway One was crowded with traffic, headlights, brakelights. It was still early evening, two men entering a bar, another man trying to use a pay phone, his fingers drink-clumsy, having trouble with the coins.

Justice, revenge, I could hear Rebecca say. I had what I wanted.

The beach was empty, except for a couple huddled near a huge gnarl of driftwood. The log smouldered, the wind kicking the smoke into flame. A face turned away from the firelight, and I heard a voice ask, “Spare some money for food?”

So often in the past I had received such a request with little interest, although I had sometimes dropped a few quarters into an outstretched hand. But now when I could not, I ached to do something human, commit a simple act of generosity.

I jogged south, away from the restaurant and the parking lot, across the sandstone rubble along the face of the cliffs, until I was was well away from sight or sound of human beings.

The salt foam was cold, but to me it felt tropical. I climbed along the limpet-spiked stones. I considered trying to die again, wading into the water, drowning. With amused bitterness I realized that I could probably inhale and exhale saltwater like so much thick air. It could not take my life. But what I felt was not like true despair. I was finished with my inner sunlessness. Something new was beginning.

A dark heap of animal life stirred. A snout lifted. A dark eye reflected the dim light. Two of the creatures were small, shielded by the adults. The sea lions observed my approach, one of them pushing himself up and out of the pile, wrestling toward me.

Just as a page of writing reflects an author’s state of mind, and just as the concentration of a reader echoes in turn that mental landscape, so I was one of life’s seconds, not life, but free, as poetry is, or the image in a mirror.

I cast no reflection in a glass because I was a reflection, broken out of the frame and glass.

The sea lion dug his fins into the stoney beach, but with each movement he swung his body to one side. He could not approach me directly, because one of his fins could not bear his weight.

He rushed me, a growl, a lunge. I hushed him with a whisper, and knelt beside him. The animal gazed into my eyes, and I had an instant comprehension of what he saw in me. I had begun the evening with a sense of self-loathing, but he saw me as a fellow mammal, possibly a curiosity, but nothing worse.

The fishing line around his forelimb had dug into the flesh. I untangled the knot, and gently pulled the filament free. I tried to open the cut in my fingers, but it was healed. I punctured my hand with my teeth and let a little of my blood trickle onto his whiskery snout. He opened his mouth, like a hound eager for a treat, lapping the blood as it fell.

The world was fertile. These sea lions, Connie, Stella—each thistle on the cliff above stretched its brambles into a future. And I fathered nothing.

There must be some reason we love the end of the land, the emptiness of all that is left. We have to be in love to look at the turbulent void and feel that it belongs to us.

Perhaps it was at that moment that I decided what I would do, but my future was predicated in my growing recognition of my powers, and in my constant love for Rebecca. What had been an obsession for a living man had flowered into faith.

There was no reason for me to hope, and I had nothing like human expectation in the future as I circled, high over the surf.

The flight was long, or it was swift. I could not tell. I did not experience the journey as an event that took place within the fabric of time.

When I arrived at the parkland of sepulchers and tombs I did not search—I only found, without hesitation.

I was there, at the grave of the woman I loved.