David leaned back and examined me. “You’ve never asked for that before. Even when you were dying.”
“Ask God to forgive me for what I did to Cory Bonnett. I could have done better.”
“It’s better if it comes from you.”
“I’ve said a thousand of them. I want one from you.”
“Well. Let’s pray, Nick.”
LOBDELL DIED ten years ago. He was seventy-nine, retired up in Lake Arrowhead. Hung around with a bunch of old cops who had places up there. Fish the lake, tell lies. I’d go up a couple of times a year to see him and Shirley. We’d always end up talking Baja. How I puffed the cigarette and said “tequila” for Mexican customs. Waved at the U.S. guys and didn’t wake up until we hit the hospital. Kevin went off at eighteen, knocked around the country some. Became a park ranger in Yellowstone, married a Montana girl, and made Lucky a granddad.
My father went next. Heart attack in the garage while he was repairing a leaf blower. Eighty-four. After the death of Clay and the paving over of the orange groves that had needed him, Max replaced enjoyment with busy-ness. Just wanted to be useful. Never saw that the people who loved him wanted his company, not his know-how. Silenced him when the Soviet Union fell apart. He’d liked fighting the enemy much more than winning. Nobody left to tangle with. We’d had a nice hour the week before he died. Katy and Mom in the kitchen. Dad in the blue recliner and me in the white recliner with the news on low. Can’t remember what we talked about but it was pleasant.
Mom made ninety and died last year. She’d finally gotten past Clay somehow. Accommodated it. Saw his name on the memorial wall in Washington and something inside her let go. Better after that, found things to do away from Dad. Learned to swim at the Y in Santa Ana and did it almost every day. Group of ladies got tight. Volunteer work at St. Joseph ’s. Wrote a long history of the Beckers, from Germany and Ireland and England to the pepper fields of Anaheim. Hours of research and it came out well. Bound in leather. Spent her last two years with David and Barbara. The grandkids drove her around. Pool in the backyard and they found her at the bottom of it on a hot summer day. Embolism.
KATY AND I are doing just fine. Willie is a newscaster for KNX radio up in L.A. Put that strong voice of his to good use. Katherine sells newspaper advertising and raised three kids. Stevie is offense coach at Tustin High School. Took Howard’s old job. I go to all the games. Sometimes I’ll drive out to catch a practice, see how the team is looking. Listen to Stevie bellow at the players. Put that strong voice to good use, too, I can tell you. Our little Paul died a few hours after he was born. I wasn’t sure Katy and I would make it through that. There’s no sadness like it.
I still stay up late but don’t drink as much. Quit that after Baja. Walk the neighborhood with Katy in the evening. Prowl the house after she’s asleep. No good reason. Once a cop, always on duty. Mostly just sit and read and think. Sometimes go to the garage and pull open the Odd Box and touch the things I’ve collected. Still there, all of it. From the Mercury launch rock to the switchblade with the white handle to Charlie Manson’s guitar pick. Andy about flipped that day in sixty-nine when he realized who the little folksinger was. Gave me the guitar pick for a birthday present. The night before they let Bonnett out I held the slat I’d ripped off the packinghouse floor. Nails still in it. Funny smell. Hard to imagine it had taken thirty-six years to cancel that case. Sometimes I touch the tiny cap they’d put on little Paul’s head when he was born. Light blue. Girls got pink. Something wrong with his heart. Maybe the air freshener I used. Maybe what I did with Sharon. I don’t know.
I miss being young. I miss being young and strong. Young and fast. Young and in love. Nothing like it. Old love is good, too. But you get the feeling that the world mainly just wants you out of the way.
A COUPLE of days ago I went down to a surfing break called Rockpile in Laguna. Heard Cory Bonnett was there in the evenings. Andy told me this. One evening they surfed and Andy got Bonnet telling stories. Andy will do anything to hear a good story, even hang out with the guy who killed his brother. Lynette and one of Bonnett’s girlfriends came down later and they hit a Laguna restaurant and drank late. Andy says the women were on Bonnett like you wouldn’t believe. Innocent studmuffin, soulful blue eyes, his girl murdered, all that.
I sat on a flat rock at low tide and watched him ride the waves. He had a stiff leg from the gunshot. Gave him a jerky kind of motion getting onto the board. Once he was up he couldn’t really bend it too well so he stood up tall. Made him look casual in the big waves. Plus he was a pretty huge guy. People got right out of his way.
I went back to Rockpile again yesterday. Had worked on my speech half the night before but still wasn’t sure what to say.
Bonnett surfed until it was almost dark. Last guy out. I sat on the same rock and watched the sky go from blue to orange to indigo. Catalina black on the horizon. He finally came in. Limped south toward the hotel. Board under one arm, backpack over the other shoulder.
I caught up with him. He turned and stopped and looked down at me. Had me by four inches and sixty or eighty pounds. And thirty-six years of rage.
“I’m sorry it happened,” I said. “I got fooled.”
“That’s all?”
“We didn’t plant anything. I wanted you to know that.”
“All that little prick Stoltz?”
“All.”
“And now I’m supposed to what?” asked Bonnett.
“Up to you. Is there anything I can do for you?”
“Give me back thirty-six years.”
“Would if I could.”
“Then just get out of my sight.”
I walked north to the Giggle Crack. Watched the water surge in and shoot up. Some kids out on it, barefoot on the sharp rocks, leaning forward to see in. I ran them off and heard something about “old fart, mind your own business.”
My own business.
Farther up the beach I did something I’d always wanted to do. Shucked off everything but my boxers and wedding ring and waded in. Cold. Fell in face first and let the waves pull me out and push me in. Flipped onto my back and watched the stars glide back and forth. Imagined one of those crate labels with the pretty girl and the orange blowing in the Tustin wind. Don’t know why. Everything connects. Closed my eyes for a second and remembered that blackness at the hospital. How it could have gone on forever and almost did.
Sometimes at night I’ll start to fall asleep and catch myself. Jerk away from that big black forever. I want to stay on this side of it.
So I opened my eyes again and felt my hands on the sand below me, my body sliding toward the beach. Stood up and shook off and hustled over to my things. Old man in his underpants on a public beach. Not a pretty sight but you only get one life, two at the most.
Got to live a little.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many thanks to Richard Lewis for his fascinating accounts of the Brotherhood of Eternal Love in Laguna Beach. He handed me a wonderful piece of history, and his generosity of spirit and time are both very much appreciated.
Heartfelt thanks to Larry and Nina Ragle, who read an early version of this book and offered me scores of questions, corrections, illuminations, and improvements.
Donald A. Stanwood gave me an incisive and invaluable reading at an early stage.
Many thanks to Chris Evans, director of the Surfrider Foundation. I hope you like the Mexico sequence.
Thanks to Richard Shaner for his insights into religion and the religion business.
For their stories and memories of Laguna Beach and Tustin in the 1960s, many thanks to Mike Schwaner, Randy Hicks, Greg Nichols, and Dionne Wright.
For his comments on the medical aspects of miracles, thanks to Dr. Kurt Popke.