Joshua and Duncan ride beyond Oakland through a strange dusken light, pink-tinged clouds feathering the sky above them, not speaking but quietly enjoying the sensations of the ride: the sound of the Indian’s heavy engine, the weight of speed pressing upon them, and the world changing so quickly, weaving through the fragmented light seeping down beyond the tree line flickering and blinding as a strobe and then the sudden and comforting reprieve of the nether light before dark. Evening birds—doves and whip-poor-wills—sounding and challenging in the gray, ashy bracken, and barely visible through the high firs, a feathery skein of stars.
They motor though the ashen twilight, Duncan holding tight to Joshua’s field jacket, along twisting roads soured by the odor of strange tamarind trees and through the high-roofed tunnels of giant Douglas firs, the evergreen smell of them sharp in their nostrils, the loud rumbling sound of the bike’s exhaust cast back at them from the thick surrounding growth, muted and strangely echoed, altering all sense of space and of the distance over which they travel to Admiral’s Point.
The night comes fully then and a cold breeze with it so that Duncan clings tighter to Joshua’s waist, his eyes watering in the chill, moist air. The Indian’s headlight a narrow white light trembling on the road before them and sweeping across the firs that press out at them from the darkness at the sudden sharp angles of the road, which Joshua handles effortlessly, as if without thought, merely leaning this way and that and slanting the bike so steeply at times that Duncan thinks gravity will pull them down and smash them upon the road, send them spinning like a sparking, gasoline-spewing whirligig hurtling out into the dark.
Finally they reach Admiral’s Point, cindered gravel crunching beneath the tires, and Duncan climbs, shivering, from the bike. Beyond the wide grass expanse of Soldier’s Park the distant city shimmers.
Joshua walks toward the flagstone walkway and Duncan instinctively reaches for his hand even though he knows he is too old for this gesture and Joshua takes it in his calloused grip. Duncan wonders about the nights mother rode with Joshua on his bike, which was rare, and to the places they traveled. What did they talk about? Was he ever a part of their discussions? Did he have a place in their plans for the future?
Do you take mom up here? Duncan asks.
No. Only you.
Why?
Joshua seems to think about this and then shrugs. Some things a man just has to show another man, yeah? Some things that don’t need explaining, some things that you don’t want to explain even if you could. It’s like those trips you take with your momma, just between the two of you. So, this is just between us. I mean, what do you two do when you’re together?
Nothing. We just drive. And sometimes Mom gets sad or tired and she cries and then we come home again.
Joshua purses his lips, considering this. Is that all right with you? he says. The driving, I mean. If you don’t want to go, you can tell her, y’know?
No, it’s okay. I don’t mind.
Far, far away a tugboat blows its horn. Duncan thinks of the things that fathers say only to their sons and the words that never need to be spoken, uttered aloud. For no reason at all, his heart begins to hammer; it feels tight and squeezed and sore in his chest.
Joshua, will you tell me about my father? And although this is what Duncan asks, for the first time he is no longer interested in discussing him, who he was or what became of him, he merely wants Joshua to speak and to hear Joshua’s voice.
Joshua fills his mouth with air and then holds it so that his cheeks balloon. He stares out at the water, lets go of Duncan’s hand, making Duncan wish that he hadn’t spoken at all, and presses hard at his eyes. Finally he exhales. Nope, he says. I can’t do that. I promised your mother. Why do you care so much about this anyway? What has he ever done for you? Here you got your mother who loves you. And she’s struggling, and it’s hard.
I don’t know why. He’s my father.
Joshua thinks about this for a moment. Yeah, I know. My father’s out there too.
Joshua laughs, and Duncan smiles, glances toward the stars.
No, I mean right out there—he lives in Oakland, I haven’t seen him in fifteen years. Joshua’s smile widens momentarily, teeth flashing, and then as he looks out over the bay, his expression hardens.
One time, he says, my father took me to a basketball game, to the Celtics. That’s back when your mother and I lived in Boston. She never tell you things about when she was a little girl?
Joshua looks at Duncan and Duncan shakes his head. I was so damn excited, man, I must have been talking about it for weeks. It drove my mother crazy. I thought if I kept talking about it then there was no way my father could change his mind, but I also worried that if I talked too much, he would change his mind, but I couldn’t help myself. See, my father never did stuff like that, never did anything with us.
The C’s were playing Cleveland, I remember that. And I remember that at some point in the game my father stood up, just for a moment, to cheer. Someone scored a basket, I don’t remember who, and someone shouts from behind us: Sit the fuck down, you fucking nigger, and my father paused, turned around to see who had shouted at him. He stood there and looked back at the crowd. And then a whole group of voices cry out: Hey, nigger, sit the fuck down! And my father did, but first he turned back to the game and stood there for a moment as if he were still cheering and wouldn’t give them the satisfaction. Then, real slow like, he sat down.
He didn’t watch the rest of the game and neither did I. We just stared straight ahead without saying a word to each other. When the game was over, my father sat there, and finally, when the Garden was empty, he stood up and we left. We didn’t talk the whole ride home and he never took me to another game again. We never did anything together again.
And it may sound stupid, I was only ten, but I knew that my father was a broken man, that he no longer had any pride left. When he beat my mother, deep down I think I knew he was trying to beat the pride out of her too. And I hated him for that. I’ve always hated him for that. He thought he was strong, but for him to do that to my mother, to me and my little sister … Joshua shakes his head. I promised myself I’d never be weak like that.
You have a sister?
Had. I had a sister. Long time ago.
Joshua rolls a cigarette with his battered fingers, hands Duncan his pouch of tobacco as he lights it, breathes it in deep and then exhales. The familiar sweet smell of Mother’s Burley hangs there between them. He nods toward Oakland.
My father came out here after my mother left, after Boston. Back east we’d lived in West Medford near my mother’s aunts and brothers, me and my little sister, my mother and my father. It was hard then, but my mother’s family were all educated, had good jobs. My mother had gone to Tufts and my father never could stand that. Very proud he was. Always angry at my mother for showing him up. That’s what he’d say, she was always showing him up, with her book smarts. He couldn’t stand that she was better than him—it shamed him.
Joshua turns to look at Duncan now and his face is rigid, set like stone.
Don’t you ever touch a woman, okay? A man that touches a woman ain’t no man. Look at me. Do you hear me?
Duncan stares at Joshua unblinking, and nods.
Duncan, there’s going to be a time when I won’t be here and you’ll need to protect your mother and yourself. And I don’t want you to think about it, okay? Just act. Do whatever it takes to protect the both of you. When you hit someone, don’t just hit them once. Hit them so many times they’ll never be able to lift a finger to you again. You got it? Are you listening?
I’m listening. I just don’t know if I can ever hit someone.
Well, then, my man, you’re going to have to learn, because in the end no one can protect you but you. And your mother needs you, Duncan. She’ll never say it, but she does. Will you promise me you’ll be strong for her?
I’ll try, I promise.
Joshua nods. My man, I know you will. You’re a good kid.
He stares out at the bay; cigarette smoke steams from his nostrils.
I shouldn’t be telling you this, but I think you should hear it, you so stuck on your father. When I was sixteen, my father almost beat my mother to death with a wrench and the only thing that stopped him was me getting in the way. I hit him and I didn’t stop hitting him. He crawled out of our house on his belly while I was still hitting him. I broke his nose and his cheekbone. I fractured his eye socket. I doubt the man ever saw properly again. I wanted to kill him, and perhaps I should have. If he’d been around when I came back from Nam, I would have killed him, and he knew it.
Joshua shrugs. But my mother was already dead by then, so it didn’t matter any more. He quiets as if he is suddenly aware that he’s been talking too much. The sound of him seems to fill up the night; it seeps into the air about Duncan like the fog snaking up the wide banks of the bay.
Duncan looks at him. How did she die?
Jesus, I shouldn’t be telling you these things.
His jaws clench and the hollows of his cheeks deepen with shadow so that he appears even more gaunt. He says: She fell on subway tracks, the El in Boston—two years after she left us. It was the rush hour commute and the platform was crowded so maybe she was pushed, or maybe it was an accident, who knows? Anyway, she touched the third rail and she died.
I’m sorry.
Yeah, me too.
He draws on his cigarette and after a moment it steams from his nostrils. He says: I always thought I’d get a chance to see her again.
Below them, and perhaps a quarter of a mile away, at a short distance from the coastline stands a large derrick, two hundred feet high, and on either side within a floating caisson, two cranes. At their height small amber and red lights flash on and off. Out at the center of the bay another derrick tower emerges darkly from the water, its metal and iron skelature like the eviscerated remains of some prehistoric serpent held and frozen aloft in ice, and that remained when the glaciers retreated. Fog swirls and trickles through its vast ribs and spine and they watch—Duncan is aware of Joshua breathing close to him—as the fog slowly engulfs the derrick entirely, until only the lights remain visible, blinking dully through the ghostly banks of white. The tugboat horns come again, muted and seemingly even farther away.
Right there beneath the water, under the bay, is where we’re digging the tunnel, Joshua says. By next Christmastime we should be done.
Joshua points to the center of the strait where the water shudders with sudden movement and turns round and black. Damn, my man! Will you look at that!
A geyser of water shoots into the air in a mushrooming spray. Two massive rudders slap the surface of the water, and then a colossal tail arcs from the whitecaps. Duncan sees a mouth of tufted baleen, a gleaming back and side encrusted with barnacle and scar.
A whale, he says in disbelief.
They watch as it makes its slow way down the bay, a green phosphorescent wake shimmering two hundred feet behind, beneath the fog-entrenched Golden Gate, mist swirling about it like smoke. And its moan a deep, low foghorn sounding the lonely depths of the vast Pacific before it, responding and calling to others of its kind, perhaps a thousand miles away, each sailing its own shadowy and vast corner of the increasingly empty dark spaces of the sea. With one final plumed exhale, it begins to sink beneath the water. Its wide flukes show, and then it rolls and spins into the deep.