I don’t write autobiography or memoir, but I often use real events as a start point for my fiction. I’m sure most writers do. Sometimes memories come floating along without context, without rational explanation, they’re just there, triggered by a smell, a sight, a feeling, the minutiae of life. These pictures appear vivid, bright as day, begging to be recorded and then they’re gone like waves receding from shore.
“Treading Water” came about as a sort of experiment in capturing these memories. I wanted to take a collection of scenes and connect them not so much through narrative, but rather through context, jumping from one to another the way the mind wanders in those wonderful moments of quiet reflection.
I decided to use scenes that take place near the ocean. I started writing the memories as they came without knowing how or if I would connect them. Eventually a story of two people standing on a beach watching the waves roll in emerged, and it became the frame for the scenes I ultimately decided to include.
I think it plays out sort of like a short film or a prose poem.
Here’s the link: “Treading Water”
Enjoy.
Update: It’s now been added below the fold on this post. Enjoy
We leaned against the front of her dusty car, which was parked on the beach. The water lapped up nearly to our bare feet, and we drank warm, cheap beer from silver cans. Seagulls drifted lazily on invisible currents of air, floating and coasting over the water, calling to one another, occasionally diving. Ghostly blue oil rigs shimmered on the distant horizon. A jam box pumped music into someone’s party, and we ignored the steady bass thump-thump that drifted down the coast.
I took a sip of beer and watched as all the water in all the world’s oceans slowly contracted, smaller and smaller, until it occupied an almost infinitesimal point somewhere out on the horizon between two of the oil rigs. The near invisible blue splotch of water bobbed up and down over the empty seabed, dancing upon the horizon while fish floundered on the bottom and seagulls dove for the suddenly easy catches amongst the scurrying crabs and suffocating fish.
She smiled at me and took my hand. “What are you thinking about,” she asked as the tiny spot of water grew and grew, rushing towards me, expanding and spreading before slamming into me like a huge tidal wave with a force that nearly laid me flat. I watched the towering wall of greenish blue water rush by overhead, submerging and pulling us under in the terrible thunderous noise of a howling sea storm.
The light is summery bluish, and still manages to retain some degree of warmth even at this late sunset hour. I live here with my family in a small apartment. Our dog, Gretel, bit my foot. I had a shoe on, so I’m okay. I was teasing her so I guess I get what I deserve. Rubbing my foot, I look out our window and I can see the Pacific Ocean, a deep blue, as deep as the water surely is. Somewhere, just below the sinking sun, I see porpoises jumping. Up. Down. Splash. The sun disappears into the water and night takes over.
Dad and I walk barefoot along the beach. Water laps my ankles and sand squishes up between my toes. We see a man sleeping on the dry sand.
“Dad, what’s a beach bum do?”
“Nothing.” He smiles wistfully as we walk past the sleeping man.
“No job?”
“They just hang around beaches.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah,” he says staring out into the sea, “I think it would be nice.”
“Me too.” Hmmmm…
We’re way up north of all the condos and college kids. We four found our seclusion. The bonfire peters out near the blue Bronco. My friend is inside with some girl, Lori or Laura or Lana—he’s trying to score, anyway. I’m lying on a dune watching the stars. Another friend’s head pops into view. She smiles at me. I return it. She’s beautiful. I watch her face and listen to the music rising out of the Bronco, nearly drowned by the ocean. I drowned a little too. We smile at each other. She lies down again, humming to herself.
I’m sitting alone on an old railroad bridge. The tracks haven’t been used in years, and now this stretch runs through a small bird sanctuary on the northern end of Aquidneck Island. To my back, the wind rustles through the tall reeds of the salt marshes. Looking forward, I stare across the Mt. Hope Bay at the far end of which sits a small hazy power plant single-handedly lighting up a little coastal town over in Massachusetts. Seagulls fly about in the gray sky arguing about food and nesting rights. It’s cool but not cold. Nice but not heaven. A seasonless day. A timeless day. I make a photograph, and then I leave, walking the tracks back towards home.
My brother and I take our first walk along this beach on the west side of Aquidneck. The Narragansett glows deep blue, and as we look across we can see some shacks on the north shore of Conanicutt Island. Somewhere over there is the small town bustle of Jamestown. Here, there is the near perfect illusion of solitude. I’m watching the bay, and Jon is watching the beach, so I’m the one who jumps when Jon screams, “SHARK!” I look to see him staring at the rotten corpse of a small shark. It’s white, about two feet long, and something has torn out its side. Jon picks it up by the tail, dragging it behind, and I watch him walk with it. He shrugs, “maybe Dad will grill it.”
I’m very young so everything is coated in both the haze of distance and the warm tones of childhood; everything around is wonder and magic. My friend and I run out of the backyard on Resolute Drive, over the loose chain fence that clatters as we scurry over it, down the rocks and to the shore. There’s no sand, no beach, just seashore. We wander about and laugh and throw rocks, which plunk into the slowly advancing low tide waves. We must have looked like watercolor illustrations in some old children’s’ book locked forever in time with no future selves to worry for. His name might have been Christopher, but I felt like Christopher Robin.
I’m older now. The haze and tints are there but not the ones of childhood, rather the ones of confusion. I still feel like Christopher Robin, though. My best friend stands next to me, on the verge of marriage. I think this is where we left Winnie-the-Pooh and I know, now, that Christopher Robin and Pooh will always remember each other even when they are a hundred years old, as surely as I will always remember this night. I sit back listening to the Dead, watching the stars fly and the sea breathe. I realize, we’ll always be here.
My friends, A and D, walk along the beach with me. Summer makes itself felt on the Mediterranean, and late spring romance rules our barely pubescent minds. We have a mission. D calls out, “Another bogie at ten o’clock.” A and myself discreetly turn to stare in wonder at the perfect golden breasts exposed to the sun, just ahead and to the left. We walk past, eyes staring behind cheap sunglasses. A spots another pair blossoming. We are in heaven, and we are the epitome of cool. We are lovers of fine art strolling through the Louvre, our Puritan ancestors the spice for this feast. D smiles, pure joy. “I’ve seen more tits today than anyone else in the seventh grade,” he exclaims. Thank god for sunglasses, I think.
K and I lounge in an old lifeguard tower. It’s June, about ten in the evening and the fog has settled in over the harbor. The diffused light from the wharves finds us, but not without losing its coherence. The buoy bells ring and ships’ horns echo through the thick gray mist. The air is a solid, tangible, carrier of sound and moisture. You could touch it as easily as breathe it. We’re in our own worlds, lost to all save the rhythms of the bay. Only the sea really knew we were there as we imagined ourselves into it and finally became one with the strange intoxication of waves beating against rocks. “I wouldn’t give this up for a million dollars,” she suddenly says. I agree and we settle back into the shared experience of immensity and nothingness and silence. Somewhere a low rumbling foghorn cuts the night.
We are somewhere in the Keys. We’re riding in an old smelling car. The bridge doesn’t end; it just goes along forever, hopping islands, skirting the surface of an all too blue, barely remembered ocean. I’m in the backseat with my grandma and baby sister. Someone smokes a cigarette and the blue smoke swirls out the window. My butt falls asleep. The bridge just goes on and on and on and on…
My mother drives my friends and me to the beach. There are several on base: All Hands, Officers, Dungaree, and Dog Beach (dogs welcome). We head toward All Hands, but first we have to drive across the tarmac of the air base. The beaches lie on the other side. Mom’s knuckles clench at the sight of the sign bearing the warning, “BEWARE OF JET BLAST WHEN CROSSING RUNWAY”. The yellow station wagon jerks to a stop at the sign. A pair of Phantom jets come roaring out of nowhere taking off seeming inches from the intersection. We watch in awe and wonder as the fighter planes rocket over our heads and swoop out over the South China Sea. Mom shuts her eyes and grits her teeth. When the roar of the planes dwindles into silence she relaxes and drives the car quickly across the runway. She always earned her day at the beach.
My friend, D, is very short. She sits easily on my shoulders while we run up and down the beach trying to fly the cheap plastic kite. The wind is low and the air unseasonably cool, so we have the beach to ourselves on this summer Tuesday. We laugh and goof off just like we did in high school but we’re older and she knows I won’t be coming back. It’s in my eyes and I can see it in hers. It’s the newfound Texas vocabulary. The ‘y’alls’ in my speech. I tell her I’ll be back, but we both know it won’t happen. I’m already somewhere else, and I’m just here looking at the mirrors of several old selves still lurking these northern beaches, visiting old memories like they were friends and making friends into memories.
We are over the Pacific Ocean on a Boeing 747. Some strange twist of airline booking logic has seated us in the first class section. The food is incredible and my parents drink wine. My father asks me to follow him up to the observation deck located at the top of the forward hump of the plane. I follow him up the spiral stairs and we look out the window to the ocean far below the thin clouds. “How high are we,” I ask nervously as I look down on the barely moving blue expanse far below. “The pilot said thousands of feet, is that true?”
Dad smiles, “Only a couple of miles, maybe five.”
“That’s it,” I ask much relieved. “Just five?”
Dad nods. “Look. At the Horizon,” he instructs. I follow the line of his finger against the cold Plexiglas window and I can actually see the curvature of the earth. We are far enough away and high enough up to see where the earth curves. To see that the world is round. “Amazing,” my Dad whispers, shaking his head. The engines hum, steadily vibrating us as we look down in wonder.
The hammock sways in the nighttime breeze and I listen for hours as the waves crash on the shore and the heavy winds blow off the water. Sleep. Wake. Sleep. Wake. All through the night I drift in and out. I dream of struggling under water and it’s so cold I’m shivering like crazy beneath the ratty old Mexican blanket with the red and yellow stripes. Somehow I manage to ignore the cold and find peace and sleep. When the sun finally does boil out of the deep and rise above the distant horizon’s pink squall line, I realize that even through my sleep I was completely aware of the night that had just passed - I experienced the ocean night, while simultaneously sleeping through it. I remember all my dreams, and wonder if perhaps they were really other selves, drifting through other times or if any of it had ever even happened to me at all.
“Nothing,” I said and smiled at her. She looked at me and laughed as the ocean rushed away from us and receded into the dry seabed.
“Me either,” she said shaking her head. She laughed again, and in a moment so did I. We smiled at one another, both in on the same joke as I pulled a stray bit of seaweed from her wet hair.
We lapsed again into silence while we finished our warm beer. We watched the gulls play until nightfall. The thump-thumping bass quit and drove away and the lights flickered to life out on the oil rigs, as if to confirm their existence by seemingly bringing them closer to shore. We got back in the car and drove the rest of the night.
© 1996, James Brush