sacred

Once when I was a small child, I stood on the beach alone and watched the full moon rise over the ocean. For a while a bright road lay across the ocean, inviting me to walk to the moon. All I had to do was trust that those same waves that knocked me over under the sun would let me walk on them that night. I couldn't quite do it.

But I had to let the moon know how much I wanted to, even if I was too chicken to accept the invitation. I raised my little arms like kids do to be picked up, only I meant it, well, I suppose as an act of worship, an expression of reverence, although I doubt that I could have said it that way.

Just off the bright road, out where the waves began their rush to smack the beach, a young woman stood and began walking in. I hadn't seen her, and then she was there, head, arms, and shoulders out of the water, her arms out as if for balance.

She walked to the beach, almost straight toward me. She was younger than my mother, and I felt guilty for thinking she was prettier. But mainly I felt happy, as if she and I had a secret and that made me one of the luckiest little boys ever.

She didn't have a thing on but seawater, and that was glorious, another secret we shared. She walked up to me and stood, her feet still in the seafoam. "What are you doing out here at this time?" she asked.

I grinned. "I came to meet you," I answered, blushed, and laughed so she'd know I joked and it was true, both, at the same time.

She laughed too. "You did not," she accused. "You sneaked out of the house and came down to play on the beach 'cause you thought you might have it all to yourself. Then you got caught up by the amazing moon road, but you weren't quite brave enough to walk it."

Her knowing almost spoiled whatever I felt about her, toward her. My face must've shown that. "Aw," she said and touched my nose with a fingertip, "wasn't I supposed to know?"

I shook my head. She laughed and I loved her as much as before and laughed with her.

"Let's go on up the beach a ways and watch the moon rise, shall we?" she invited. Hell, she could have asked me to go anywhere with her and I'd've tagged along like a puppy, only more loyal.

We walked about halfway up the slope. She wrung out her hair and started to sit. "Wait!" I cried and took off my T-shirt. I didn't want that wonderful bottom on the sand. I spread it and felt dismay at how small it looked, but it was certainly big enough for her bottom. "There," I said, blushing again, sure little boys weren't supposed to think like I'd been, "sit on that."

She rested a hand on my head and looked at me, both seriously and smiling. She didn't say anything, but it was better than any thank-you I'd ever heard. She sat on my shirt, facing the ocean, and I sat as near her as I dared.

I don't know that she really said anything. We watched the moon rise and the moon road narrow, then spread until it was just a swath of light, still magical, but without its former roadness or invitation. I had the impression she told me about the ocean, about whales and porpoises, about fish, about currents and waves and tides, about storms and rains and clouds and winds, more than I'd ever known or thought about. She told me sadly and admiringly, if she did, and I learned like I'd never learned listening to anyone else.

I know we sat quietly for a while as the moon climbed higher and became smaller and more remote. A breeze touched us enough to make me shiver. She may have noticed. "C'mon," she said. "It's time for you to go home. Your mother would say it was way past time, right?" I nodded ruefully, and wanted to protest that I wasn't a bit sleepy. I could tell from her tone though that I'd lose any argument I started, and I didn't want to spoil whatever we had.

I stood and so did she. She shook the sand off my T-shirt without getting any on me or in my eyes, then she handed it to me. I carried it, feeling like it was too sacred to wear. We walked back along my secret path to the beach which brought us to the back of our house where my window was. I looked up at it, surprised.

She smiled at me. "I see why you came to meet me," she teased, more quietly than most people spoke. She didn't want to wake my parents either, I decided and felt glad of that too. "You needed someone to lift you up to that window, didn't you?"

Well, I did, but I hadn't had the foresight. I blushed and nodded, and felt a little guilty for lying, but also felt pretty sure she knew, so it wasn't really a lie, even if it was. She scooped me up and sat me on the window sill. I blew her a kiss, hoping it was okay. It must've been. She smiled and kissed me on the forehead and I felt blessed.

She started to leave, then returned. "Don't worry about the moon road," she confided. "Some day you'll have just the courage you need to accept an invitation. Think of it as something you need to be more grown-up for."

I stared. It was a lot like when my father or my mother told me I had to be older or bigger to do something, but it wasn't at all like it either. She promised that when I was older and bigger I'd do the right thing for then, and somehow made what I hadn't done the right thing for now.

She patted my leg and walked away, and I admired her walk and felt both warm and a little guilty for doing that. She stepped out of sight and I watched where she'd last been, happy and sad and one of the luckiest little boys ever.

Then I swung my legs inside and slipped down onto the bed. I pulled the window closed as quietly as I could, and was rewarded by hearing my father snort then resume his deep breathing. I listened for my mother's too, but I could seldom hear hers through his.

I crept over to my toy chest and very quietly dug out the cigar box I used for special treasures. No, it wouldn't do. Not with all the special things I had in it already. But I couldn't just toss the T-shirt in with the rest of my toys! So I took out my three best baseball cards, the seashell I'd found with all the colors inside depending on how you held it, a crayon that my favorite girl friend had held in her mouth once, and a tiny truck whose doors really opened and closed. I had to fold the T-shirt carefully so it'd fit in the cigar box, then I had to find someplace else special for the cards, seashell, crayon, and truck. Ah hah! My mother had made me a jar for butterflies in case I ever caught one. It would do for the treasures temporarily.

I put everything back in the toy chest and smiled at how innocent it looked, then crawled into bed and stared at the ceiling for a while, remembering the young woman.

Morning surprised me, I didn't know I had slept. For a moment I wanted to jump up and tell my parents, or at least my mother, about my adventure the night before. I sat up and had my feet over the side of the bed before I stopped. If last night had required me to open the window so carefully it didn't squeak, and to sneak out without even making much sound as I dropped to the dirt, and required the young woman and me to talk so we wouldn't wake my parents, then it was too secret, too special to share with them, wasn't it?

I didn't like that conclusion, but when I thought about my father hollering about my sneaking out or fixing the window so I couldn't sneak out again or saying bad things about the young woman, I decided I was right. So instead I jumped down and put on some shorts and a different T-shirt and ran into the kitchen.

When I asked my mother if I could help her make breakfast, she laughed like she always did, but she lifted me onto a tall stool so I could watch her work. "Hey!" she said as she stepped back. "Do you smell different this morning?"

"Clean!" I sang out, and she laughed and hugged me. I didn't think the young woman had worn any perfume. She'd just smelled like woman and seawater and moonlight surely, and I couldn't imagine how any of that had rubbed off on me, but I didn't want my mother puzzling over any new smell I had. She didn't. She cooked breakfast.

Several times during that vacation I wanted so badly to tell my parents or at least my mother about my adventure, but each time my second thoughts convinced me to keep it a secret. I sneaked out late at night twice more: once three nights later, I think, and again a couple of nights before we left. I never saw the young woman again, not those nights and not during any day. For the two nights, I explained, "Well, the moon wasn't full, so there was no moon road, at least there wasn't when I was there, on the beach." I cannot recreate the logic, but it made sense then.

We went back to the city where we lived, well inland. For a while I was very tempted to tell one or another of my girl friends, but I convinced myself they'd dismiss the story as something I made up to impress them. I certainly wasn't going to tell my boy friends, who'd turn the adventure into smut. So it became my secret and my treasure.

We never went back to the beach as a family. We never did much else as a family either. I suspect that each of my parents turned out different from what the other expected when they married. They never divorced, but they never fought and they seldom laughed. I wished they would play or fight or drop it, but I may not have known what was good for me. I made up that each had an affair and neither cared that the other had, just to make them more interesting. As far as I know, they just did the right thing by each other and by me.

I turned out okay. I was good enough in sports and good enough in my studies, but not excellent in either, and I didn't care much that I wasn't. I was good at fighting, to my parents' dismays, and I loved it, and I cared very much that I was good at it. They accepted it well enough eventually to let me enroll at an offbeat dojo where the sensei taught "Nothing much, some of this, some of that, but discipline and courtesy." I think I picked him because he wore ragged jeans and had a hole in the elbow of his shirt sleeve the first time I met him, but it may have been that when I watched him in a demonstration, he was so gracefully not there, wherever his opponent attacked. "I want to fight like that!" I thought.

Yeah, well, I did learn the discipline, and I did learn the courtesy. My grades improved and so did my luck with girls. It wasn't until I despaired of ever learning anything useful about fighting and started going to the dojo just for what the sensei would have me do next that I began to learn fighting from him. Once he saw me dressing at the end of my training and asked what I smiled about, and I told him what I'd noticed. He studied me, tugging at his mustaches, first one side then the other. "You may learn yet," he concluded. I loved that old man!

When I graduated from high school, I seriously considered staying in the city just to keep working with him, but I'd promised myself for years that if I lived that long, I'd leave. I even considered college, despite my lackluster academics. Dad would have paid for it, he said, but I think he was vastly relieved that I never asked.

Instead I requested a talk with my sensei and told him my dithering. He considered me much like he had before, then said, "Don't be any more foolish than you must. Go. Either work this dream out of your system, or not, but find your way and follow it."

A sorta friend's father knew about some well-paying jobs at a strip mine in the desert. "Don't take these as a career," he counseled us. "Earn, save like crazy, and when you have a stake, go do something else."

I followed his advice. I worked for three years and thought I'd saved a lot of money. My muscles adapted to the heavy work. I found a local dojo and a new sensei who was amused at my lack of formal training, and did his damnedest to teach me his way instead. I never consciously resisted him, but at the end of the three years he asked, "What did you learn here?" I showed him what I thought I'd learned. He rolled his eyes and told me I'd worked hard with him.

Separate from my savings, I'd bought and resurrected an old Harley, not an antique, just one that had not been well ridden or well cared for, then stored with gasoline and oil in the tanks. Sigh. It took me more than three months to clean all the gook out and off the engine parts. Another ten months of part-time, and sometimes very part-time, work on the Harley and it was back to as good as it was going to be. How good? The local Harley dealer suggested I apply for a job mechanicking with him.

But my heart was set on leaving. I didn't really have a plan, just not the desert and not the city. I suppose I could have gone to the great farming valley that covered half the state. I know I could have trucked. But I was looking for something, hungry for something, and I didn't know what, but I didn't want to drive past it without seeing it.

I roamed around on my motorcycle for three months, and used a third of my savings. Hm. Everywhere I stopped and prowled added to my restlessness. I wondered whether I should have taken a job trucking. A farmer confided that no matter what a man does, he thinks, "This isn't it, I should've...." I grinned at him and hoped he was mistaken.

One night in a bar, I watched couples dance and thought about what I hadn't tried yet. Beer clarity! The jukebox wailed about momma and prison, a woman walked by and her scent touched me, and I knew! The beach, the young woman, the moon road, all came back to me as if I were sitting in the sand in the dark and quiet instead of standing stunned in half-bright lights and a jukebox's blare. I paid up and walked out, went back to the motel, packed, and left.

I considered going east, since that scene must've happened on an east-facing beach, but I didn't think my California ways were going to fit easily anywhere back east. Besides, California's coast was less than two-hundred miles away. I could be there by dawn.

I was, and one coast town after another wasn't it, just like the farmer'd said. And then one night I rode over the crest of some low mountains, and a nearly full moon hung low in the sky. The moon road, or close enough to it, stretched like a highway from the horizon to a little coastal town, half-surrounded by a curve of hills. I stopped and stared, and looked at the little town, and felt more at home than maybe I ever had, even knowing I knew nothing about the town.

I rode the Harley down the mountainside then over the hills. The town was closed up. Six dim street lights about a block apart were the only lights I saw except for the flickering beer label in a store window. Not even the two motels were open for business.

I rode down to the beach and parked my Harley. I carried my bedroll down to the beach, and watched the moon sink down to the horizon and then behind it. Smiling happily, I unrolled my bedroll and made myself comfortable. I slept til dawn.

A deputy woke me by prodding me with his baton. I felt so good about the town, the beach, the moon setting over the ocean, even sleeping on the beach, that I woke smiling and greeted him. It surprised him, I think.

We had a conversation, and I wound up deputy-ing for six months. When I finished my evaluation period, the sheriff told me I'd done a fine job but I'd made it clear that I was doing a job. He needed people who were deputies, as a calling, day or night, on- or off-duty. We grinned and shook hands. I was a security guard for another six months, but I had no calling for that either. I managed the lumber yard for another half year while the real manager recovered from a serious accident, but chose not to stay on after he returned.

There were other jobs I could have taken. One of the motels needed a night manager, although I didn't know what for. The motels locked up at about ten, and didn't open up again until six. The bank office in town needed a clerk. A real estate office had an ad in the paper for a salesman.

I may have worried the deputies. I rode my Harley through the hills, mainly after dark, and they often found me on the beach, watching the moon set. The town still felt like home, but like home does to a teenager - it's where you're comfortable and probably safe, but it chafes you and makes you itch.

One night as I rode up one hill, around a curve, down the other side, and into another curve I saw a cove I'd never noticed. I stopped and went back and stared, then found a place to hide my motorcycle - no use tempting any one - and picked my way down rocks and through scrub to the beach. A breeze ruffled my hair, and goosebumps rippled from my scalp to my butt.

A full moon hung maybe ten degrees over the horizon, sinking as reluctantly as a kid gets ready for bed. The surf was quiet, a steady plop-fizz then plop-fizz again. The moon road was maybe an I-beam wide.

I grinned at it, then took my clothes off and piled them under a shrub at the edge of the sand. I went out toward the I-beam, except it had become a footpath. I walked out on it, half-hoping it would support me, but not really sorry that my feet kept sinking into the water, a little deeper with each step. When the water got too deep for me to comfortably lift my feet from it, I kept wading out, using the moon road as a guide. When the water became too deep for me to walk, I swam along the moon road, farther and farther from shore. The moon kinda winked at me as it slipped behind the horizon.

I looked around, dog-paddling, startled by the sudden darkness. A wave lifted me and let me see the stars all around me and far, far away, the shore. I couldn't even guess where along it I had walked then swum from. The wave passed from under me and for a scary moment there was nothing around me but water. I sighed and set out swimming toward shore.

I swam and I swam, and eventually another wave lifted me enough that I could see the shore again. I hadn't made nearly as much progress as I'd supposed.

I suspected I should feel tired, and half-suspected I should feel fear, but I felt exhilarated, pleased.

I swam and swam until my shoulders and hips did begin to feel tired. Another wave swept me up for a look-around and the shore was still a long, long distance away.

A lot like my life, I thought and nearly laughed. I work and work and whatever it is I'm working for is still too far away for me to recognize it.

I went back to swimming, and worried a little that I could tell it wasn't as effective as it had been. There wasn't anything else to do, though, and I certainly wasn't going to quit and hope.

A long, long time later, I crawled out onto the sand, threw up, and crawled away from it, then lay down and shivered, suddenly cold to the bone. I dreamed that that same young woman sat beside me, dressed just like I remembered. I dreamed that she wove a blanket from the sand and talked me into crawling onto it, then wove another and covered me with it. "This wasn't what I meant," she protested, then she left and daylight came.

I slept anyway and woke wrapped in two sand-colored blankets, about ten feet from my clothes. I had no explanation for either.

I sat huddled in the blankets, staring out at the ocean, soaking in the heat, for nearly an hour before I dressed and worked my way up to where I'd left my motorcycle, carrying my new blankets with me. I rode it back into town, to my apartment, showered, and slept the rest of the day.

The next morning I woke certain I was starving. I went to the little cafe down by the beach and ordered the biggest breakfast they make and asked for an extra egg and extra bacon. The owner laughed and made it, then watched me eat the whole thing. He laughed and shook his head. "Maybe you should buy this place," he suggested.

He was joking, but he was serious about selling. He thought it was time to retire, and his only daughter had just had a third child. He hadn't seen either of the first two yet, he'd protested to her, and she'd told him he was welcome any time he wanted to come. He told me his price, way more than I had or had any hopes of earning soon. Oh well.

Except it nagged at me. I went to the bank and learned I could borrow half that much, because everyone in town knew me and agreed I had potential, but only potential. I laughed and thanked them.

That night I went back to the beach, where I'd watched the full moon sink into the ocean and then slept my first night in the little town. I must've heard the footsteps. I must've been too full of my own thoughts, or maybe just numb. I don't know.

"May I sit here?" a young woman asked. I looked up and jumped to my feet.

She wore a red-and-white plaid blouse and a tan skirt that fluttered around her knees, her hair was brown not black, her nose turned up a little. From the ground though, I'd thought it was the same young woman, impossibly the same age, as the one from the beach so long ago.

"Do I know you?" she said. "You seem so familiar!"

I swallowed and nearly choked. "Oh I hope so," I begged, then blushed. We laughed and sat on the beach, and for an hour hardly said anything to each other at all. The no-longer-full moon slipped behind the horizon and there was nothing to watch. She cleared her throat.

"Don't go," I pled. She looked at me a little strangely but she didn't leave. We talked. We talked about families and friends and places we'd visited. She laughed and called me a Harley hobo and said she'd never met one before. We talked about vacations we'd taken especially as kids. I hesitated, then didn't tell her about that one vacation or how I so nearly knew her.

We talked until we were both dry. "I really should go," she frogged, but she didn't.

"Let me make you some coffee instead," I asked. "I'd buy it for you, but...." I let my gesture at the closed-down town explain.

She laughed and accepted. We walked along the sidewalk. She pointed out the motel where she was staying. "One more day," she said, not quite sadly.

At my place I made us coffee and doctored it with honey. We talked about jobs we'd had, bosses we'd respected and others, people we'd known. We found a connection! She'd worked for a year after college with a girl I'd dated in high school. We laughed about that flimsy a connection and how oddly we seemed to know each other and not. We talked until we both seemed to run out of anything to say, and we sat quietly, comfortably, sharing the same space.

She cleared her throat again and I offered to walk her home. Did she look disappointed? Maybe. Probably I just hoped.

She didn't accept and she didn't stand. She looked into her cup and sighed.

"There's more," I offered.

She looked at me and seemed about to say something, then shook her head. "Maybe later," she said instead. She sighed again, then said, "When I drove over the hill and saw this little town for the first time, I felt like I'd come home. No one else has been particularly friendly or unfriendly, but I still feel that way about the town. I've walked everywhere in it and it all surprises me by not surprising me. It isn't deja vu, nothing so odd - except you. It's just home. I hate to go back to the city and my job, but I don't know what else to do."

I stared. I told her about the cafe and about being able to raise half as much as the owner wanted. She surprised me by getting excited about it. "We could be partners," she said, maybe a little awed to say it.

"Exactly," I said.

She sat and looked at me. "How very odd this all is," she said, "especially how very comfortable it feels."

I made her breakfast and we walked along the beach, watching daylight come to the ocean and the beach. As soon as the owner opened the cafe, we joined him. He looked surprised, then not.

"Partners," he said and nodded. "You could make this work. It's been a good living for me, supported a family, put a girl and a boy through college." He sat quietly, then grinned. "I met my wife at a dance," he said, "and asked her to marry me that midnight. Took me a month to convince her." He grinned wider. "Y'all are starting off faster. May it work out as well."

I blushed and felt too embarrassed to see whether she did.

"It'll take me a week to settle things in the city," she warned us both.

"Not a problem," the owner smiled, "we'll still be here."

She drove away with a smile and a wave over her shoulder, and I went riding. I rode a lot that week, daylight and dark. I spent two nights of it on the beach in the little cove, wrapped in my sand blankets. On the seventh day, I waited at my apartment as long as I could, then walked down to the motel where she'd stayed. Her car wasn't there. I went back to my apartment and stayed there until I couldn't stand it. I washed and polished the Harley, then after sunset I went for a ride.

Back home I made coffee. Oh well. Someone sane had probably talked sense into her. Giving up everything you've worked for to try out running a cafe in a tiny town on a hideaway beach, well, it couldn't sound very bright to city folks. Hell, it didn't sound that bright to me when I put myself in a city person's chair.

I made coffee with honey and poured it out because I couldn't take the memory. I played country music until I couldn't stand the heartache of it.

In the kitchen, I considered brewing another pot of coffee even though it was nearly midnight. I had just talked myself out of it when a knock so quiet I wasn't sure I heard it sounded on my door.

I think I got there in one step and opened the door without stopping to turn the knob. She looked at me uncertainly and said, "Do you still want to do this?" I grabbed her and hugged her and lifted her into the apartment.

"I guess that means 'yes'," she said, still a little uncertain.

"Oh yes please!" I said.

She told me how everything took longer than she'd expected, and how she kept knowing I'd probably left or come to my senses.

"No, no, no," I promised her.

She looked at me as uncertainly as before. "What makes you so sure?" she said.

At first I had no answer, then I told her about the moon road and the young woman and the sand blankets. I showed them to her.

She looked at them and at me askance. "What if I can't live up to all this?" she said. "I'm just normal, just human."

I knelt and took her hands. She sat back in her chair. "You're not normal," I assured her. "Nobody normal would have come back here."

She laughed, but she didn't leave. I brewed that other pot of coffee, then we brought her luggage in.

Connections: