They had reached Coney Island. Parks talking about how his fear of being caught had ruined things for him with the girl.
Did he want him to go and do it for him?
Then he had the feeling that this was someone else, not Parks. Someone who looked incredibly like him.
The salt spray like damp particles of sand in the air, like the nubby surface of a fish. Parks’ voice floating in and above a Beatles song. “… live in a yellow submarine, yellow submarine, yellow submarine. We all five …”
Diving into the waves. The water clamping him into itself. Pulling him down. He couldn’t get up. Panicked. Drowned. Came up. The air like pins filling the spaces of his chest. After that he was afraid to go under again.
For moments, it was all he remembered of his life. A small fish sticking like a bone in his throat.
“She had great sloping thighs, a cavernous woman, a veritable cave of flesh. In my dreams, I wallowed in her like a great hog. What monstrously sexy thighs! You can’t imagine. An earth mother who could disembowel you by the root. A woman of means. Everything about her was carnal — teeth, breasts, thighs. A great steamy cavern between her legs. A hidden continent. You can’t imagine. And for all I had imagined, when I was with her, absent without leave, I couldn’t get my bone to the sticking place.”
They pulled into a makeshift-looking parking lot at the dead end of Coney Island. Eight cars in the whole lot — theirs the ninth. (The water there, for some reason, not good for swimming — more polluted than the rest.) A few looked immovable, camouflaged by heavy layers of dust as if they had been in the same spot for years. The attendant, an old Negro, asleep on a wooden chair in front of a small yellow shack. All the time Parks (or his double) telling his story, Christopher taking notes in his head.
They walked toward the boardwalk, toward the ocean.
A girl about fourteen, with an accent, asked if they’d like to make a sandwich.
“Take off your shoes and socks,” Parks said, making it sound like an order. Sitting down on the damp sand under the boardwalk to remove his own. He did as Parks did.
“How is it the sand doesn’t hurt your feet?” he said. Parks running on his toes. On the sides of his feet.
“I don’t think about it.”
The sand is cool where the tide, which has now gone out, has washed over it. They walk on the damp sand along the ocean’s edge, over fragments of sea shells, braids of seaweed, used condoms, unborn fish.
“I couldn’t get her out of my head, those great thick tunnels of thigh — a scar on her belly where something was removed — so I went off the fort again without a pass to see her. Absent without leave. No one covering for me. The danger greater than before.”
Parks rolled up his pants legs to the knees. Holding his shoes in front of him, he waded ankle deep into the ocean like some exotic bird. The foam rushing across his legs, trembling them.
He followed suit. The beach they were on almost deserted. A few people swimming far out beyond the breakers. Some drops of rain. A man carrying a child on his shoulders came out of the water about ten feet ahead, went by.
“When I finally made it with her, I couldn’t get enough. She was amazing. Her flesh consumed me, swallowed me up, her great hips and thighs. I was like a cannon going off in that voluminous forest of flesh. I was like a supercharged cannon. Ignited by her. Without the will to stop. It was like a descent into hell.”
They walk along the water, up to their knees in it, Parks on the inside, a step farther in, talking. Talking. There is no one near them.
“I kept expecting something to go wrong, someone to give me away, some punishment for what I had done. It became clear after a while that no one cared whether I had been AWOL or not. No one gave a damn. No one wanted to know. It was painful to get away with so much. Ruined my pleasure in the end.”
His words like drilling on a Novocained tooth. Parks, talking about provoking a fight with an officer, a fist fight in a bar, tosses his shoes on the dry sand. While the other has his hands full, he punches him in the side of the head.
Christopher stumbles, throws his shoes toward the shore. “I thought you don’t believe in fighting.” His hands at his sides.
“For taking advantage of me in my absence,” he says. “For screwing my wife.”
He backs up, takes another punch. Backing up. The water deeper, making it harder to retreat. Hunched forward, Parks stalks him. He slips in the water, comes up with a handful of mud, which he flings at him. Parks spits mud, cursing. His face and shirt spattered.
“You did it to get at me. I trusted you like a son.”
“I did it for you.”
“Contemptible bastard.” He is murderously angry. They wrestle. Christopher gets free and moves out of his reach.
“What do you mean, you did it for me?” Parks’ eyes afraid of being seen, strangers to the window they look out of. Spies. “I didn’t want anything like that. What do you think I am?”
He was dangerous. He decided to kill him.
As if reading his mind, Parks takes a step back. The water lapping the edges of his rolled־up pants. “As far as I’m concerned, it’s over,” he says. “It’s better now that we’ve had it out.” He holds out his hand.
“That’s right.”
He turns his head, stares out at the ocean. The mud stains on his shirt like wounds. “I feel better now.”
Turning his head to follow the direction of his stare, seeing ocean on ocean on ocean. The sun at the farthest point resting on the water, sinking. He watches the sun burn into the water — the ocean on fire. An enormous wave breaks in the near distance and he watches it coming down on him.
They are waiting for his signal. The sex maniacs, the Communists, the protesters, the police, the bombers. He goes over on his side into the fire.
How clear it is underneath. The man’s legs are stilts. He snaps them loose and watches him tumble like a cripple. Pulling him into the deeper water, his arm around his neck. The undertow stronger than either of them, but then he becomes the tow himself. The man tries to lift his head but the tow is too strong for him and brings him to the bottom. His face like a blowfish. He is saying something. Echoes of sound. Have to pay. Couldn’t stop. Father. Me. Failed. Love me. Fighting. The end. Stop. He turns him over and presses his face into the clay. He presses down until he enters the clay, becomes black like the bottom. His arms out. He is dark now.
“Peace,” Christopher says.
It is possible to breathe under the water. There is no longer any reason to worry. My father floats by at the head of a school of fish.
Someone calls my name.
Bells are tolling. Fully dressed except for shoes and socks. Late for an appointment, my pants like a balloon. Whooooooooooooooo.
“This is my son,” he says. “I am well pleased with him.”
God, it is an agony to rise.
On my hands and knees. The lifeguard is there, others. A crowd. “Are you alive?” someone asks.
They have to fight to hold me down. Someone sitting on my back, beating water out of my lungs.
They help me up. The sky all sun now, blazing, luminous, flickering like jewels off the water. There is no sign of my shoes. No sign of Parks. He was the noblest of them all. The sand feels like ice.
They insist I sit on a wet bench in the first-aid hutch. A child of about four or five sits next to me, crying for his mother. Everyone finds his mother, I tell him.