What must the children think of me talking to myself up here? They’re used to it, I suppose. I’ve been talking to you for days. And if not you, this dog.
Maggie, you’re trembling. It’s okay. Oh-kay. I put my hand on her head. She’s shaking. Poor girl. You stay with me. You’ll be all right.
It moves [whispering]. Adjusts itself, like it’s just alighted there and now settles in for a long wait. It’s miles out there. If I can make it out from here… How big is it?
The mass of children fills the beach out to the water and under the long jetty fishing pier that stretches out a couple hundred yards out into the surf. Matagorda barrier island splits just off to the west and I don’t see them beyond that, but in the other direction, to the east, they fill the beach for as far as I can see. Among them are the whale carcasses. I don’t know how many. By the holes among the kids, there’s fifty, maybe more up the beach. With the binocs I can see a few of their rotting jaws agape.
There are a couple of whales floating and rolling with the surf near the beach, running up against the jetty pier’s concrete columns. Big ones, black and gray. When they roll into the pier there’s a thudding and a wet-wood squeak. Shark fins pop up all around them. I can see one thrashing and tugging with a mouthful, its eyes rolled back white. In the frenzy the water whitens and foams.
Dear reader, gotta tell you: there’s fear in this much ecstasy. They fill me with it. Euphoria, intoxication like I can’t explain. I want to laugh out loud, I brim so.
I feel the burden of their need. They need me. They hum now, low. Competes with the waves’ roar and hiss, the pier’s thud and squeak. They pull me.
I fall apart here… I can’t explain. I just can’t. What I’m seeing, hearing, feeling. When a writer can’t do that, he puts his utensil aside and waits. Maybe he comes back and picks it up again. Maybe he doesn’t because he just can’t, and more, doesn’t want to. The story finishes for him and it’s then that it belongs to the world and to time.
The elation I feel is exquisite. I could die feeling this good.
Alas, Mags. A beach. Where we crawled from the smile. I mean slime. Heh. Feeling a little woozy. Sitting a seawall sit in the sun. Hey, alliteration. All litter rationed.
That thing just sits out there. I know it moved. I saw it. Staring contest it wants? Fine.
The kids make me feel welcome with their humsong, yet they won’t approach. Like one wouldn’t approach a powerful force, a hot electrical wire, or wild flames. The euphoria I feel juxtaposed to their wariness of me. Cognitive dissonance doesn’t cut it as a description because it’s beyond mere cognition.
The sun marks the sky’s midpoint. Time I stand up. I’m standing to face them, reader. When I lock my knees, their singing stops. Maggie sits next to me. The euphoria lifts up and away, venting out through the top of my head so suddenly I think I might throw up.
I think of that lipsticked nurse and that little girl. How I threw up right there on the Hancock Bridge.
Thud. Squeak. Here, listen. [thud-squeak of whales hitting pier]
The thing perched on the drilling platform. Does machinery move and flinch like that? It’s miles out there. It could be anyth—
—wait. Way out on the pier. The very end of it. I hear a voice! Solid, old-world weight and fricative. Not a nauseous song.
I’m wincing through the bright. She’s walking, now running down the pier to shore.
Kodie.
I’m jogging along the top of the seawall. [breathless] Toward the dunes in front of the nature center. She’s running parallel to me on the fishing pier which is about a hundred yards to my right heading inland. She’s running and waving.
“Kevin!”
Is she glad or fearful? Seems like she’s good. No kids running after her. C’mon, Maggie! Let’s go see Kodie!
The kids know to back up, give us room, we relics of the old world reconnecting. I’m on the beach in front of thousands and thousands of them. I feel the weight of their stares. Their faces contain ghosts of smiles. They all have the same look, measured in the same amount of ghost. I scan for Johnny. No eyeglasses on any of them. Not one.
Here she comes. Wearing new clothes, like a wispy sarong wrapped around her hips. Toga-like scarves and stuff on her torso. Barefoot. I’ll shut up now.
KJL:[25] You came! You’re actually here! Oh my god. [the microphone pops and scrapes, sounds of deep long kissing]
KGM: When they took you, I thought you were—
KJL: Oh no! No no no! They’ve been good to me. They’ve bathed me, fed me, sang to me. They put me in… this.
KGM: You look good.
KJL: I feel fine. Unsure, but okay. I’m good, actually. Believe it or not. I’ve been in such a daze, though. How long has it been? What’s this? [tapping sound]
KGM: What? Oh, yeah. On my way down here, hazy days, maybe a week? I’ve been recording what happened to us since the morning of. Like a woefully raw and unedited audiobook memoir.
KJL: Why?
KGM: You know I wanted to write. Dunno. For me. For us. So we don’t forget. Make it a real book someday.
KJL: Hummm.
KGM: Because things are going to change.
KJL: Oh, I know.
KGM: This is a transition period. To remember these early days… You’re nodding, smiling, blinking.
KJL: Yeah?
KGM: Sorry. Sometimes I may lean down into this mike and say something. I’ve been doing this for so long now, talking into this, to myself. This running commentary now… Maggie thinks I’m crazy.
KJL: Hi, Maggie. You kept her. All this time. Brought her with you all the way on the road. I can’t believe it.
KGM: No. No no. The river. I kayaked down here from Lady Bird freaking Lake.
KJL: What?!
KGM: Yeah. They didn’t tell you I was coming?
KJL: They don’t talk, Kevin.
KGM: You wrote that note? How did—
KJL: What note?
KGM: Your handwriting. Look. [Velcro ripping, papers shuffling]
KJL: Um, yeah. My writing. I have no memory of that.
KGM: Is Johnny here?
KJL: Yeah. Out there on the pier with me.
KGM: Why were you all the way out there? Johnny!
KJL: They wanted me out there. I stopped asking why a long time ago. They take me wherever. I don’t struggle. They’re never mean. But they are rather insistent, just by their sheer numbers. Johnny says they won’t be like this for much longer, things are about to change. Like you said, a transition period. Shaky and weird. [pause; beach sounds] Ah! You’re here! But, wait. Hold on. You kayaked, with a dog, all the way from Austin?
KGM: Yes. Floated mostly. River’s completely flooded. Nobody manning the damn systems upriver. Tons of rain, Austin, Utopia—
KJL: You were in Utopia?
KGM: I drove out there to see if maybe I could find those guys who contacted us on the radio.
KJL: Did you?
KGM: Nope. Nobody there.
KJL: What? What’s wrong?
KGM: There was a kid there. Nate. They say anything to you?
KJL: Did Johnny say anything to me about a Nate? Huh-uh.
KGM: Look at that. Guess they’re burning whales’ blubber?[26]
KJL: Living on the fat-o’-the land.
KGM: They do this before?
KJL: Huh-uh.
KGM: How’d you stay warm?
KJL: Nature center.
KGM: They keep… guard?
KJL: Kind of. You know how they are. They don’t do anything like it was done before. Whenever I’d stir in the night, get up to go to the bathroom—
KGM: The water works here?
26
Evening now, by the time stamp. It is believed they sit above the beach on the sea wall.