Day Twenty-Nine (Sunday, July 25, 1971)

I woke to a community of squatters in sleeping bags etched across the rocky beachscape. Couples and singles. Painted vans, secondhand campers, and motorcycles parked along the road.

“Were these people here when we arrived? I was in a major daze.”

“You bastard, Roger!”

“Huh?”

“If it weren’t for my date with Denise, I’d tell you where to stick it. I’d stay right here in my sleeping bag all day!”

“Hey man, what are you so sore about?”

“Suffice to say I know where I’m gonna be sleepin’ tonight, and it ain’t gonna be on no recommendation of yours.”

“Well excuse me for not knowing ahead of time the laws of Huntington Beach.”

“You son of a bitch bastard prick, Roger.”

The sun was hot early. The oil dredges, or derricks, whatever you call them, were like mechanical woodpeckers, digging deep into the ground with strong metal lines. The air smelled oily and rank. The sand below our ledge was like roofing tar. The surf, brackish. It was an environmental disaster in-waiting that I hoped was under control by people who were in charge of such matters.

“Hey man, the romantic pair-ups are right for once. Don’t you agree? I like Cindy best; you like Denise.”

Otto didn’t reply.

“That’s the key in this pickup business—don’t compete for the same girl.”

He stared like I was poison.

I laughed. “We seem to attract Indian squaws, don’t we? You heard Cindy say they have Cherokee blood? Except this is going to be way better than Alvah and Natasha, I promise you.”

“Know what, Roger? Go fug yourself.”

“What?”

“Go fug yourself!”

Cindy’s long blond hair, blowing in the sun, was the reference by which I found her. She was sitting on a blanket—minus Denise—with a picnic basket and radio, clothes folded to one side. Prayer come true, she wore a brief white bikini, held together by silver rings. She saw me coming from the side of her eye and stood. “Hi Rodney!”

Her body was deeply tanned, with mature curves all in the right spots. Her smile was warm and unassuming. A thin, gold necklace with a small gold heart hung on her neck.

“You look good.” I gulped.

“Thanks. Come and have a seat. What’re you doing on the beach with your shoes on?” She consolidated her items, and looked at Otto glumly. “Denise is off somewhere. I don’t know where.
I get so mad at that girl. Don’t worry, Omar. She’ll be along sooner or later. She knows she’s supposed to come. I’m as upset as you are.”

Omar was cranky, to say the least. Add being spurned on top of it might prove fatal. But there was nothing I could do. Denise wasn’t on a leash.

“Hey, we’ve got an apology to make ourselves, Cindy. I hope you weren’t sitting here long. We had one of those pesky nights that gets your head out of alignment.”

She laughed, then listened to our adventure of the night before with benevolence. She turned it around and mentioned a few times when she’d been stranded in the wee hours of the night without a ride.

“Rodney, your eye is all bloodshot. Do you know that?”

That led to my telling her about my encounter with Duffy, the “abridged version.” Somehow it came out sounding more noble than foolish. Our early back and forth exchange let me know we’d be able to fill up a whole day with conversation.

Cindy clumped her shirt into a ball and tucked it under her head to lay on her back. Not me—I nestled into the sand and sat up avidly. One thing I didn’t bother with, though, were other girls. Cindy Latourette took care of that need just fine.

Omar lay on his small frayed towel a foot off Cindy’s oversized blanket, which made him seem like a poor orphan. I didn’t object to his presence; I just hoped Denise appeared soon. Personally, I was set.
Between the sound of the waves, I hummed “You Really Got a Hold On Me” by Smoky Robinson and the Miracles, which Cindy recognized. She conducted the music score with her arms and swayed her body.

Cindy sure could talk mechanics. Shovelhead choppers. Ignition systems. Engine blocks. Muscle cars. She clacked away while I relaxed like a prince. One thing she didn’t talk about was an oversized class ring on her finger—a heavy brass nugget with string wrapped around it. She mentioned a foxy friend that she did things with, always referring to “friend” and dropping the gender, and never correlating between this person and the ring.

“It’s her business if she’s going steady with some guy,” I thought. “I’m sure as heck not bringing up Amy Weisburg.”

When I tried to shift talk to my home turf, she asked, “New Jersey— is that near Montana?”

We hit several dead ends, but always managed to bounce back into common territory.

The ocean was cold, no denying that. But having someone to bear it with made it tolerable. Cindy’s hide was immune. I loved watching her taunt belly bend and twist to the motion of the waves. She was the type of swimmer who didn’t body surf all the time, but instead glided overtop the waves as they rolled in. Once a big one swept her apart from me, and we grabbed hands and pulled one another closer.

“You’d be my pick of the girls even if we hadn’t met. Thank you for the privilege, Cindy!” Lustrous water streamed down her skin.

We went for a meandering walk along the water, bumping hips, arms, and legs. I was aware of Cindy’s every smile and glance, her keen attentiveness, the position of her dangling hands and gyrating hips.
At the tail end of one of our laughs, I strung my arm around her waist. She moved closer. Not only that, she slipped her finger through the belt loop on the back of my shorts.

Cindy stopped to collect seashells and gave one to me. “A keepsake of our day together, Rodney.”

“Do you know that the shells of the Atlantic Ocean are much bigger?”

“They are?”

“Must be different species of clams. I’ll send some to you.”

“Oooo, that would be bitchin’.”

Further down, she was in the middle of a story about waiting outside a liquor store for someone old enough to buy apple brandy for her and her friends.

“Should we turn around?”

I enveloped her in my arms. Sun-warmed skin swooned from my fingertips to the small of her back. Her lips came up to mine, a limitless well. I thought, “Girl, this is so bold and joyful, in front of the whole world!”

Arriving back at the blanket, Cindy was laughing. Rodney was blushing. Omar was vacuous.

“Denise still hasn’t gotten here?” Cindy hunched forward with her fists clenched and shook her hair. “That two-faced girl! She should’ve been here long ago! She does this all the time. You can’t depend on that girl. I’m sorry, Omar. It looks like it’s not going to happen.”

“Ah, I’ll get over it.” Omar’s pout drifted away in the sea breeze. “I’m in no mood for company today, nohow.”

Not so much as a rustle came from Omar for the remainder of the afternoon. He nibbled on half a sandwich and gave the other half to me. I tried to get him involved in the conversation, but he was sacked. Unplugged.

For Cindy and me it was more sunbathing, another swim, and another nice walk. With the radio on I deeply meditated over music, its textures, its structures, its harmonic elements. Every time I lifted my head off the blanket and viewed the golden tanned Californian body next to mine, I heard a rhapsody.

“Thank you, Cindy!”

“Rodney, you’ve said thank you to me more times than all the guys I’ve ever known put together. Thank you, honey.”

She stood up to straighten out the blanket, and I saw her nipple. Lord! On display was one whole white female breast, water fresh, teenage-certified, garnished with erect brown nipple. I leaned over and
initiated another kiss, which I got for the taking. Omar was asleep. I smashed the cymbals and pounded the bass drum. The scoreboard was even! George 2, Winans 2. Knotted at two apiece. All squared up and ready for more.

“You look like you need another, Rodney.” She leaned in with confidence. We squeezed each other passionately. It was even exultant.

As the hours moved ahead the sun’s warmth waned; the ocean’s roar grew distant. Cindy sat up and put on her shirt; I knew the hourglass was drawing low. Denise supposedly was having a piano lesson back in Hemet in the early evening, so the family needed to be getting back. I could accept that. Everything happened that I wanted, no major foul-ups occurred aside from Denise’s failure to show up, I tied George on the tallysheet, and my hormones eased. That’s success. If Cindy and I were to see each other a third day in a row, I might not have much to say, judging how we came from opposite poles. But as a one-day stand, physically and mentally, it served its need.

“Goodbye, Omar, nice knowing you,” Cindy waved to my distraught partner. He squinted as if he couldn’t see who she was.

Cindy and I kissed goodbye on the sandy hill across from her motel, another long one with hugging. We exchanged addresses.

“Rodney, I had a very good time. Take care and we’ll see each other again. Write.”

“I will,” I said, positive I wouldn’t.

She ran down the side of the hill, her blond hair and flexible body bouncing in rhythm. “Bye for now!”

Otto was burnt to a crisp. He was sitting on his towel, running his fingers through his hair, purposely contorting it as badly as possible.

“No offense, Omar, but you look like an orangutan who has been sitting in the middle of a burning fire all day without moving.”

“That’s how I feel, Roger. Singed in black.”

I didn’t know what else to do to cheer him up, so I serenaded him with an all-out performance of “Soul Man” by Sam & Dave.

“Got what I got the hard way / And I’ll make it better / Each and every day /
So Omar, don’t you fret none / ’Cause you ain’t seen / Nothing yet.”

If he was surprised I knew the lyrics to the second verse, including the bridge, he didn’t show it. I plopped down, cupped my arms around my legs, and rocked back and forth.

“Well well well.” I barely held back my glee. “A quality performance by today’s starting pitcher. Keep those batters swinging at the wind. Guess what? We’re both at .500 in the standings.”

No response.

“Two-two. The new standings’ll be in tomorrow’s newspaper. ‘Rodney Pulls Even With Slugger Omar.’”

Still no response. “Now excuse me, good sir, but is your name Omar or Otto?” Otto’s face was red, sullen, prickly. The skin on his nose was peeling.

I resang “Soul Man.” He finally snickered.

“So how you doing, my good man? Nice day, huh? I see you got some sun.”

“Burned.”

“You can’t win every ballgame, you know.”

“Oh, yes you can. The U.C.L.A. basketball team with Lew Alcindor has proven it.”

“Well, I won in convincing style today. It’s too bad the other team got drubbed. It always lifts the morale to win the away games.”

“Shut up, please.”

I went for a long swim in the ocean. Otto declined. He agreed to come for a walk afterward. We headed down the beach, southward, letting foam run up our legs, kicking through remnants of sand castles, inhaling sweet, seaweed aroma. Neither of us spoke for a long time. I was dying to rave about Cindy, but kept my tongue in check. However, I did my first-ever cartwheel.

“Let’s face it, Omar,” I finally said. “Last night at the motel, Denise probably said to Cindy, ‘Hey, forget about me going tomorrow. That Omar looks like a wack-off of dire proportions.’”

“I’m low, Roger. The only thing I got on the top of the world are my feet.”

We kept going and going, past the far end of Huntington Beach State Park, to where no one was swimming or even walking. Just us, a quiet stretch of beach, and a breeze to tighten my curls. Finally, the orange sun edged dramatically close to the horizon before fading behind distant clouds. Gulls flocked against the sky.

“Hey man, there’s our postcard moment. Life is glorious. I know I don’t speak for everyone. I feel for you. I would’ve been pissed, too.”

His mouth twitched. “At least we know Denise had good sense. She stayed away from me.”

He got hypnotic on the walk back, absently relating boyhood stories about fishing excursions he used to go on with his father, about marching in the Memorial Day parade with his Little League team, and remembering fun times in Boy Scouts. He circled back to Denise.

“She didn’t make mince meat outta me, Roger. No way. That would be givin’ her too much credit. I’m the fool on this one. I’m the do-it- yourself variety.”

At Jack in the Box, I toasted him with my chocolate milkshake.

“Here’s to our upcoming tour of the United States. Say, why don’t we use Route 66 and see the south? I read that it’s famous for Art Deco architecture all the way across. The canyons and red valleys must be beautiful. They say it’s the most direct route through the south, though it’s in danger of becoming extinct by the interstates. Let’s use that—at least to St. Louis. Then we can turn northeast from there.”

“Don’t talk to me about nothin’ south.” Otto caught a piece of hot apple pie about to fall from his mouth. “I’ve heard there’s all sorts of rednecks who don’t like northerners, Roger. They think they’re still fightin’ the Civil War down there. We’d have to keep an all-out watch for anyone carryin’ a Confederate flag. Plus you don’t know how many cars there’d be down there. Places like Oklahoma and New Mexico have hardly been settled. I don’t know if we can put up with that. Travel By Thumb says no.”

I made a concession. I agreed to shelve Route 66 in favor of Otto’s less-ambitious plan—take I-15 through Nevada, and go up the middle of Utah. In Salt Lake City, we’d connect with I-80 again for the haul east.

“Does it have to be that way?”

“Throw the old dog a bone, won’t you? I deserve it, sons.”

With darkness falling, he led the two-mile hike down to the oil rigs where we bunked the previous night. Tonight our slumber was ruined . . . by helicopters. That’s right, loud, menacing choppers. They were on the same mission as the ground jeeps—to uproot beachcombers. Imagine—sleeping peacefully on the sand near one of the mechanical woodpeckers, and being shocked awake by a loud chop-chop-chop- chop, the rotor hanging precariously low, its powerful strobe piercing the soil.

I was frantic. The beam spotted me as I climbed up the rock hill to the road. I ran for my life. It was terroristic. Bombastic. Soon as we were off the beach, the copter capped its beam, lifted higher, and rotated its attention to others who were scrambling in all directions like ants.

He and I cut down a side street into the residences. California suddenly turned into sinister Hanoi. It was a suburban jungle. I tramped blindly down an enemy street that was dark and narrow, hidden by foliage. I was wringing wet with sweat. Within a block we came across a modest, cinderblock house, private, encased by leafy plants, bushes, and unpruned vines. All the lights of the rooms were off. We spent the night there, on private property, propped up against a green, mildewed, slat fence.

“Goddamn it, Roger. I’ve had it with this trip. This ain’t no way to take a vacation.”

“We got there too early. I guess you can’t show up at the oil fields until after four.”

As always, I tried to look on the good side. But it was getting brutal out there.