Brick crushed his chest. Over time, an entire pallet of brick lay on him. Some were thoughtfully, willfully, placed, others dumped in a rough heap from a rock pocked, rusty, wheelbarrow. After a while, gravity, desperation and lack of air. He’s bug-eyed and blue from exhalation.
The brick load started slowly; one common brick = one beef, an argument, then another, it goes like that. Then the Normans, a little larger, a little more weight. Later jumbo bricks with “divorce” and “custody battle” and “financial settlement” and “visitation” imprinted and fired in the raw clay till the brick became dark and hard and they too were loaded on the pallet. He can’t deny the weight now but he’s pinned and unable to offload. To the untrained eye the brick seem dumped on the palette in a heap but from his unique vantage he knows there’s order to the brick stack. Now, lately, there’s more heft to the load. More bricks stamped, “layoff,” “repossession,” “parking fine,” and “overdrawn,” “late fee,” all adding to the impersonal collateral damage. His flattened lungs scream silently for air while the noise in his head roars like the ferocious hot brick kiln furnace. Today the weight of clay is too much to bear. Plus, this morning, he’d drunk five cups of coffee for breakfast— maybe that’s what set him off.
He’ll fix everything— grab his board and paddle out through the breakers, past the fog bank, into the shipping lanes, head west to find the East, to China, find the spot where the sun boils into the ocean. And in the process pull off the magic trick of finding a true vanishing point. He’ll disappear from earth without a trace, oh sure, a sailor aboard a freighter from Tasmania may spot the battered surfboard out in the endless churning Pacific, the sailor may wonder how this red, blue and green Hawaiian flowered thing got so far from shore but this will be the only query, there are many things unexplained in the ocean.
He pulls his oxidized Ford truck, off Highway 1. He notes the little character adding dents on the fenders and hood trying to remember how the truck looked when he drove it off the dealer’s lot. Parked on this lonely stretch of beach he welcomes the ticking, cooling engine, the sound of ocean, and the mist gray sky. He doesn’t take his keys out of the ignition, no need for keyed things again. He squirms into his wetsuit, pulls his longboard from the back, and trudges hangdog and splashing into the water. He doesn’t look back to shore but wades in the cold, green water. When it reaches his waist he drops the surfboard in the water, lies down on the board and begins paddling into the threatening breaking surf.
Emerging from his fight through the breakers into the relative calm of deep water, he begins to feel warm. Breathing deeply he straddles his board like a strange wet cowboy. No rush, he figures he can paddle, take a break, paddle some more and do this for of hours. There is no time clock on his quest for oblivion.
Just then, just when his mind settles to his task, a titanium, colored 1959 Desoto drops from the sky and hovers inches above the water, the controls are manned by a navigator covered absolute in shiny black latex, the surfer can’t make out a face or mouth, the pilot is without definition. Immediately the mystery Desoto ranks as savagely ominous as a Great White shark— and, of course, he panics. Who wouldn’t? In a blurred flurry of arms and legs and splashing he turns his longboard. Undone by primal hysteria he’s terrestrial again flailing for shore. He flings himself to the dubious safety of a swell coming in. In his mad dash terror, he takes off too soon, the wave has peaked and is curling in on him, the board noses in under the wave and he pearls — becoming a speck of irritant in the maw of the sea — he’s sucked into power of the wave and driven to the sea bottom, the board now launches skyward, drunken crazy, like an early Soviet rocket. Tumbling under the wave the surfer is exquisitely free from gravity. Like a demented wild-eyed sea bird he breaks the surface, gasping for oxygen from the foggy sky. Above, the scene the spaceship hovers peacefully. The surfer takes stock of this juxtaposition — sky and sea and hovering car. His small purchase of reality has nothing solid for reference except for the vehicle.
The spaceship is the spitting image of the long finned ‘59 Desoto. A Desoto with a little customizing, the four headlamps seem inspired from the pages of Playboy magazine— lovely up turned cones with centered bumps that resemble Hershey Kisses. So the rocket’s had a double boob job and the wheel wells and undercarriage are smoothed over, clad in space age sheet metal charred from heat and friction during space travel. The Desoto hovers but doesn’t push and scatter the water the way a helicopter would, if it makes any sound it’s not audible over the surf.
Nervously glancing over his shoulder he paddles out again, the waves are good. The surfer senses the Desoto at rest but what does he know about space travelers and their intentions? In a few minutes, he’s paddled out past the breakers and is bobbing on his board waiting for another set of waves to come in.
A flat but echoing voice emanates from the Desoto, its electronic tenor reminds him strangely of New York Jew, “Sonny boy, I see you’re new at this— you won’t catch a cold if you don’t come in a bit and paddle with some oomph.”
Amazed, the surfer looks up, “ You speak Eng…There’s surf on Mars?”
“Think about playing the Catskills? And sonny, when the swell picks up your tushy and you start sliding down, dig with both arms.”
Grumbling to his board, “Shithead Martian.” The surfer is a beginner— the last take off didn’t go too well— the alien might be on to something. He begins to paddle, collecting the on coming swell, the tail of the board rises, he digs with both arms as the wave crests, the board dips down into the green water then as by divine intervention the nose comes up, he’s got the wave, though he slips a bit he gets to his feet and rides the wave most-way to the shore where he does a falling dismount in the water. An eerie cheer that seems to come from inside the rocket echoes his own triumphant, involuntary whooping.
No longer fearful of the Desoto or its pilot, the surfer paddles again through the white water, through the breaking swells, out into safe deep water, straddling the board and breathing hard, he’s buoyant atop the unmatched ancient energy of the sea. Out here he catches his breath, out here he can catch his breath. He’s become the mythical urban trucker who’s forgot to close the tailgate; slowly his load of brick is dropping off into the Pacific.
The space ship glides in close and the surfer beholds the spectacular—a perfect single drop of emerald seawater glistening beneath the singed belly pan of the Desoto.
“Wa…why are you here? Don’t have to rush off and destroy civilization or some other damn thing?” The surfers voice is strangely calm he’s making conversation not accusations. “Don’t mean no disrespect but there’s no people or politics … aint’ nothing important goin on out here.”
The Desoto sits motionless as if painted to the sky, the voice booms, “I just spent three hundred of your years getting here. I’m in no rush.” The Desoto dips a bit. “Who’s to say what’s important?”
“ Yeah but you don’t really belong here now do you?” Waves break over the nose of the board and he runs fingers through his wet hair for no aesthetic reason.
“ Sonny I could say the same for you, dressed in neoprene and sitting on a Styrofoam and fiberglass board in the ocean. Am I mistaken or are you in the wrong element? Gills I don’t see.”
“Okay, okay. You’ve got a point but this is fun — when it works. Strange fun like horror movies or sex, which can kinda be the same thing sometimes. You hip to sex? ”
“Intercourse for procreation or fun?”
The surfers face beams, “Fun.”
“Oy, sonny boy, the girls of Zoltar… stories I could tell…”
“ That’s what surfing’s like — scared and excited sex. But... You already know this don’t you?”
“It’s a big universe…”
A swell gathers and rises and pushes to shore. “I’m going for this one …”
“Paddle, Paddle, Paddle. You got it now— Dig, Dig, Dig. Ride earthling like there’s no tomorrow,” You never know.
He catches the wave, ascends to a fighters crouch, feels the sea churning beneath his board and feels — exalted — the remainder of his load has capsized without regret. Now there’s nothing but this moment, and in this moment he’s on the right side of things, life balances, in this moment— this one small piece of time — there is perfection. Overcome he slips and falls backward in the surf. Unburdened lungs inhale salted air. He catches a few more waves. Finally he glides through the frothing white water to shore. He’s grinning. He’s aware of the surf’s sibilance, a squawking gull, sparkling grains of mica in the sand — his head chatter’s dissipated like the burned off morning fog. The sand massages the surfer’s feet as he ambles to his truck— surfboard tucked under his arm like schoolbooks —lightened. Today’s great weight, gone. Sunlight shimmers off the keys still suspended in the ignition, reminding him of today’s lapsed mission.
Looking west, the sun has dipped, diffused light from our star shimmers jewel like from countless waves, a flock of pelicans glides over the water, everything in his vision is open and clear and limitless. In the fold of horizon, the Desoto has vanished.
