Brian slept well, waking only to shift position in the bag, and whenever he sat up he could see the word shining in the night.
HAMBU.
The mountain blocked the rising sun but he woke automatically before dawn. It was cold; he hurried to dress and to get moving. The word was gone but the ocean sound was still there. He started down.
He saw telephone lines first, then broke into the open on a road. There was a drive-in hamburger stand under a huge sign. End of the word must have burned out.
The sun was up and casting long westward shadows by the time Brian walked down into the town. The streets were deserted, not even a delivery truck out, and the paper scattered everywhere made it even more forlorn. Election posters and handouts. Brian remembered that it was the day after. The faces of smiling candidates flapped around his sneakers as he walked. It was a small town with low, Spanishy architecture and all kinds of spiny green plants he had never seen before.
He came to a circular plaza and stopped to rest. There was a fountain statue in the center of it, surrounded by a highwalled moat. A pair of bronze-and-birdshit forty-niners panning for gold. The water wasn't running.
The moat walls came up to Brian's chest, the water still and clear. He could see coins shining up at him from the bottom, could see quarters and half-dollars among the pennies. He had a little over four dollars and one cinnamon doughnut left from his trip. There was no one around.
Brian took his jacket off and rolled up his sleeves. He pushed himself up and balanced at the pelvis on the edge of the wall, like he was on the parallel bars in gym. He bent down and dipped in as far as his arm would reach. The water was freezing cold, his hand didn't touch bottom.
He tied the strap of his duffel bag around his left leg for ballast, then swung his right over so that he was straddling the wall. He took his shirt off and leaned over sideways. Farther. The duffel bag was lifted clear off the ground and the water was up over his armpit and he still couldn't reach. The coins looked so near, looked like they were only a few feet below the surface. He gave one more effort and began to slip in, stopping himself only by digging in his nails and flailing with his wet arm. He managed to shift his balance back and flopped panting onto the street.
Brian put his shirt and jacket back on. He tossed a penny into the water and watched how long it took to hit bottom. The bottom of the moat went below the street level, the water was probably over his head inside. It was an illusion, the water magnified the coins so they looked closer. ETERNAL HOPE, said the plaque that lay at the forty-niners' feet.
The Pacific Ocean was green. He realized it was cold, late in the year and early in the day, but he had expected blues from the Pacific, pastel blues and turquoises and aquamarines like in the surfing movies or the picture of Balboa and the soldiers in his American History book.
"It's like nothing you've seen in your life," the old man used to say to Brian, shaking his head in wonder. "None of the freezing garbage-and-oil-fouled puddle you've got here, none of your miserable boardwalk rinky-tink. It's pure and clear and just slightly cool to the skin, breaking over the white-sand beaches of the Golden State. The mere sight of it could stop your heart with beauty," he'd say. "And the sun they've got, filling up the sky, toasting the air about you, that sun sets into it, warming your face as you look out over the water."
There were plastic benches behind a low stone wall, with steps leading down to the beach every hundred yards or so. There was a plain of sand strewn with a kind of seaweed Brian had never seen. Giant brown peapods, as long as Brian was tall. The beach was alive with reddish brown squirrels that twitched from spot to spot. Brian squatted at the edge of the water and waited for a wave to reach his hands. Up the beach a ways an old wooden pier stretched out into the ocean a good quarter-mile. Brian patted his face with seawater and returned to sit behind the wall. He watched the waves and ate his doughnut.
Two men were walking along the wall toward him. They were too far off to see any detail of their faces. One was a lot taller than the other. They came closer. Older men, both wearing canvas sneakers. Kind of rummy-looking.
"Mind if we siddown, young fella?"
Brian didn't see how he could refuse. They weren't going to shake any change out of him, though, and once they realized that they'd probably leave. He nodded to them. The tall one sat at the other end of the bench and the stocky one, a Chicano with an amazing crop of thick, black, wino hair, offered his hand.
"Pleasetomeeyou pleasetomeeyou berry please," he said and pumped Brian's hand like he was shaking an aerosol can. "You know Misser Horse? He own tot big buildin by the school, berryberry weltymon, I use to work por him ohyes tot not ri' Donnydonny?"
"Slow down, Cervantes," said the tall one. "Take your time."
"Ohyes, Donnydonny. Slowdown." He sat next to Brian, smiling with a set of beautiful white teeth.
"Don't think I recognize you," said the tall one. He had a small blue Navy bag that he was fishing his hand through. "You just get into town?"
"Yuh."
"My name is Daniel Boone," he said, "and the fella next to you is Cervantes. He don't make much sense no more but he's a helluva good man. What's your handle?"
There was no way he could top them, even if he made one up. "Brian McNeil."
"And where do you hail from?"
"East Orange."
"Oh yeah. I been there." He winked at Brian. "You thumbin?"
"Yuh."
"Thought so. I went on the road a while, I was your age. Till the war come."
Daniel Boone's white hair was still wet, combed sideways across his head. It looked like he had pressed his pants by folding them into a square and putting them under something heavy, they were covered with checkerboard creases. He wore a red flannel shirt and had metal teeth. They were aluminum or something, whenever he opened his mouth there was a flash.
"Say, Jersey," he said, "you haven't seen an old fella down here this morning, big old fighter's ears and a green overcoat? Can't really talk, just kind of grunts and gurgles?"
"Tot Stofey he grung he groang he is so bar to unnerston ohyesohyes."
Brian said that he hadn't seen anyone.
"Funny, he's usually down here by now." Daniel frowned and pulled a quart bottle of Thunderbird from his bag. "Maybe he decided to take his breakfast in bed. Care for a pull, young fella?"
It couldn't have been much after seven and Brian didn't like wine, but it was an occasion. He had just seen the Pacific for the first time, he had made it to California, and here was an alky offering instead of asking. He took a modest gulp.
His father never touched wine. "It's a sneaky, back-door way to drink," he'd say. "If you're going to bend an elbow don't be diddling around with any of your glorified fruit juice. Give me an honest glass of beer or some Irish whiskey, something to keep the fire going inside." The old man drank flat beer at breakfast, sheltered from the evening's chill at the Hibernian, and carried a pint bottle of fuel for his night watch at the freight yard. He had a difficult time staying warm.
"Speakin of bed," said Daniel, "where'd you put up for the night? Mountains?"
"Yuh."
"That's good. Town cops'1l bust your ass you try to lay out on the beach. Me and Cervantes have been setting up in the dead-car pile back of the Earl Scheib body shop there. Had me a Cadillac last night. Best sleep I had in months."