TAPE ELEVEN 2/22/86

About twenty minutes before the bus got to Breezeswept Point I woke up. It was a good thing, because it wasn't a regular stop. You had to tell the driver where to stop. But then, the way things turned out maybe it would have been better if I'd just stayed on the bus.
I'd slept almost from the time we hit the desert the afternoon before. I remembered stopping in Mojave for dinner, and I noticed they pulled over in Minden for breakfast, but otherwise I slept like I was drugged. I hated to admit that my mother could have been right about shipping me off, but the thing was, even though I'd spent a lot of time in bed the last few weeks, I hadn't really rested my mind at all. When things get like that, almost any decision is a relief. It would have been better to go somewhere besides the lake, but it felt pretty normal for that time of year. Maybe part of me really wanted to be there, but it raised other problems.
I should explain that we had a house at Lake Tahoe. It was built on a piece of land that jutted out into the lake. The place was called Breezeswept Point and was part of a conference grounds owned by a church. The manager of the grounds was Frank Harmon who'd been a friend of my parents and my grandparents for years, so I guess my mother’d used some personal pressure to get him to take me on. I was very sure he wouldn't have given me a job otherwise.
The bus stopped between the groups of upright logs that formed the entrance gate; the driver got my suitcase out of the compartment, and I walked down the slope to the office. No one was there, but I knew that at 9:30 on Sunday morning everyone was down the hill getting ready for church.
"The hill" was something you had to contend with all over the grounds. There really wasn't much flat land there. The whole place was built over a spur of the Sierra Nevada that ran right down into the lake. On either side there were really nice wide beaches at Zephyr Cove and Marla Bay, but like Grandpa used to say, the church mice got what was left over: mostly rocks. The compensation was the view. From almost every point on the hill there were views of the lake and the mountains that left people just standing and looking, like they'd been hit in the head.
To get from where I was to the dorms and other conference buildings was about two hundred feet straight down. There was a switchback road for cars and trucks, but a few years before, some great person had donated money to build a flight of granite stairs. They'd turned out pretty well and were broken up by ponds and flower planters and places to sit.
The people who came for conferences left their suitcases at the top and one of the crew guys hauled them down in a truck. I'd have to wrestle mine down by myself. As I reached the top of the stairs I looked out over the lake for the first time.
When I was a kid coming to the lake with my parents, Danny and I always used to have a contest to see who could be the first one to see it. As we dropped over the mountain crest we'd strain to see the sparkling blue through a V in the hills and scream, "I spy," when we did. I really loved coming to the lake.
Now that seemed like another life, but no matter what else was pressing, there was always something very moving about first seeing it. Tahoe wasn't a moody lake - never grey or green like some - and it wasn't merely picturesque, like a footnote to some mountain or forest. It was a lake of power, and there was a lot of power out there. It was the power of concentration: concentrated beauty, concentrated color, concentrated brilliance. That day - that early in the day - the air itself shone, like the lake was pulling in more than its share of the sun.
But then there was another side I'd come to know. When I was ten, my best friend had been found floating face down near the breakwater. No one knew why it happened. He could swim, but the lake took him anyway. They said the true bottom of the lake had never been located, it was so deep. In World War II an army plane had disappeared into it and had never been found, but people claimed the pilot's body had turned up floating in a flooded mine near Virginia City. Was it possible that all great beauty had to have dark secrets underneath? That thought started to pull in others behind it, and I'd had enough of that. I started down.
Maybe I was just hungry, but by the time I'd gotten about halfway down I felt more exhausted than if I'd been climbing with a full pack. I stopped at a landing and flopped on the stone bench. I wondered if it really wouldn't be better to get out of there - just go somewhere else. Then, as I looked back up the hill, I noticed the flowers for the first time. The planters overflowed with pansies, petunias, snapdragons and tiger lilies in a wild cascade of color pouring down the hill. I knew it was the work of Owen Savage, who'd been gardener there since before I was born. He'd really gone crazy that year.
What was stranger, though, was that the slopes on either side of the stairs seemed to be competing with him. Orange-red Indian paintbrush, blue lupine and fields of green and white clover carpeted the areas below the Jeffrey pines. Their tops were just beginning to bend in an early breeze, and the sun, breaking over them, sent down shafts that split the shadows and lit the flowers like from inside.
Emotions really came over me, and for a while I felt like I was going to get all out of control and stupid again. The mountains can be like that, and after all I'd been through, I felt like I was coming apart. I cast around in my head,looking for some relief. Then I thought about Frank Harmon and felt worse yet.
When I say that, it's not like I mean Frank was a bad man. On the contrary, to me he was always one of the best. Maybe that's why I felt so bad about what happened the summer before. I guess it wouldn't really sound like all that much to anyone else. That was the first time I'd worked on the crew. Usually crew kids were around eighteen, so I was the youngest one there. Frank must have thought I was like my father, who he knew very well, and maybe that's why he gave me a job. Instead of putting me in the kitchen, like I'd hoped, he put me on the outside crew which meant trimming trees, cleaning the grounds, hauling garbage and - that summer - digging two monster septic tanks for the dorms.
I didn't think I was lazy, but I'd never had to work very hard. Maybe I was just being stupid, but I felt like he was pushing me harder than the rest, maybe because no one had ever really pushed me before. One day things just weren't going well at all, and I got pissed and told Frank - in front of some of the other crew guys - what I thought about garbage and septic tanks and other things.
Frank's discipline usually consisted of very clever sarcasm, but that was about the loudest he ever got. I learned that summer, though, that his silence could be tougher than other men's screams, especially when the other guys pulled the same shit. The last few weeks of summer were very quiet. I couldn't get away fast enough and planned never to work there again.
The memory of all that was pretty depressing, but then I began to think about Frank himself. In a lot of ways he was like my father. A tall, straight man, he must have been raised with plenty of hard work, and ultimately, that was how he - and my father - judged other men, by their ability to withstand hard work and to do it well.
Unlike my father, Frank liked to talk, and his sense of humor was the sharpest I'd come up against. He rarely answered a question straight - shooting instead for the double meaning - and his eyes gave off sparks when he had a good joke. Even as a little kid, I'd searched him out. He always did me the best favor any adult can: he talked to me like someone who could understand, and I usually did.
That was why it was so tough to remember what happened between us. Still - I began to think - still, if there was a way around last year, maybe Frank was the one who could save me. With that thin hope, I grabbed up my things and started down again.
At the base of the stairs, just to the left, was the chapel. I stepped into it for a moment. Some of the crew kids were cleaning and putting out hymnals. It was a large building, covered outside with rounded pine planks that gave the appearance of logs and lined inside with knotty pine. The walls were filled with windows, and their plain glass was more beautiful than any stained because of the view they let in. Frank and my father had worked for over a year finishing that building, just the two of them. During one winter my mother and father had made the ten wood and frosted glass chandeliers that hung from the cavernous roof.
One family story had it that when I was about two Grandpa was delivering a sermon there one Sunday morning, and somehow I squirmed away from my mother and ran to him right in the middle of a real pulpit-thumping part of his delivery. Without losing a beat, Grandpa, who doted on Danny and me, reached down, picked me up, and continued on. Of course, I soaked up the attention and behaved myself during the rest of the sermon and later, sitting next to Grandpa in one of the large chairs behind the pulpit.
There was really no place I could go on those grounds that my past - short as it was - didn't come flying out at me. I'd run through every building, hidden behind every rock, fished every inch of the waterfront and swum everywhere, although it still gave me bad feelings to swim over the huge boulders that lined most of the shore of that rocky point.
Church services would start soon. I turned back and continued on to the dining hall. I climbed to the porch and looked through the double screen doors. I could see Frank sitting on the other side of the hall, nursing a cup of coffee and talking with the cook.
At best, I expected to hear a few civil words from him and then be packed off to my room or put to work. I was totally unprepared for what happened. Spotting me through the door, he crossed the room in a few of his big strides, came through the door before I could open it, and, to my amazement, gave me a strong hug. It was the first close human contact I'd had since Marlene left. I could feel the tears pushing against the back of my eyes, but masked them with a broad smile. I can still see Frank at that moment and feel his strong arm on my shoulder. I can't explain his doing something that seemed so right for the moment, but so out of character for him. Maybe it was something my mother had said to him. Maybe I reminded him of his old friends. Or maybe he simply knew I needed help.
We went into the dining room. The cook remembered me from the year before and was nice the way he welcomed me, too. What was more important, he got me some food. The altitude always made me hungry, and, anyway, I hadn't eaten for almost a day.
Frank didn't say anything special, except that I should take it easy that day, but it was his attitude that was a big relief to me. Then someone came in with a problem and he told me to go ahead and put my things away. I headed for the back door of the kitchen, as usual, but he reminded me the new crew dorm was finished. I was glad about that. The year before six of us had bunked in an old storage shed behind the kitchen.
Going to the crew dorm meant that I had to haul the suitcase about halfway up the hill again, but it was worth it. The rooms were really nice and there were only two kids to a room. The girls had a separate floor, but before that they were in a separate building. What I liked best was that these rooms had twin beds, rather than the old steel bunkbeds. I didn't have any illusions about getting crew girls into bed, of course. Half of them were ugly, and all of them were religious. It would be a dry summer in that regard.
Frank had told me two room numbers where there was only one guy to the room. He said I could pick. It was an easy choice. One room looked out over the lake, and the other one had a view of the base of a cliff about six feet away. But as I was unpacking in the lake-side room, I found out why I should have picked the other one. There was a smack on my shoulder, and as I turned around I was nose to nose with a grinning Jim Eisenman.
I suppose there are worse things to find at the end of your nose, but I couldn't think of one at that moment. Actually Jim was a pleasant-looking guy, and everyone thought he was some kind of superboy, but I was not delighted to see him. In the first place, he'd been on the crew the year before, and I hoped there weren't many of those still around. But mainly Jim was a kind of guy I just found hard to take.
The year before he'd convinced everyone that the crew needed a president, although there'd never been one, and had gotten himself elected. He organized the weekly prayer meetings and the special meetings when some important church leader was there for a conference and wanted to meet the fine young people of the crew. He was the son of a minister from Sacramento - like most of the crew members were related to ministers in some way. His family had a cabin on the grounds, too.
Eisenman was always organizing shit like Quarterbacks for Christ or Cheerleaders for Christ or Student Hot-Shots for Christ. He was in his second year at college and was going to be - guess what - a minister. I could just picture his church. You'd probably have to bring a school yearbook and prove that you were some level of hero just to get in the door.
What was hardest to take was the smugness that was almost concealed under the friendliness. There was a lot of that around that place. It seemed to go with certainty of calling and destiny. I sure as hell didn't want to room with it all summer, but I slapped on a damn-great-to-see-ya smile, punched him on the arm in return, and started to plan like crazy how to get the hell out of there.
As it turned out, we roomed together all summer. The next day they pulled the extra bed out of the other room for some conference. There was no way for me to change rooms without making a stink, and that was the last thing I wanted.
During lunch I met the rest of the crew kids. I was relieved that there weren't many from the year before. The burnout rate was high there. The work was hard and the pay stunk. Even religious inspiration only cuts so far. Everyone seemed friendly, though, and my confidence was beginning to build for the first time in weeks.
There wasn't much going on that afternoon. The next conference wouldn't be in until the next day. Some of the kids invited me to go swimming at the Cove, but I felt a little urge to walk around the place. It was something I usually did when I first got up there, although there wasn't much reason for it. Nothing changed there from year to year.
I started out along the lakefront trail. Between the trail and the boulders that formed the shoreline was a row of cabins, and some of them were pretty fancy for a church grounds. I guess there was a lot of competition to get right on the lake, although I didn't care for it, to tell you the truth. I'd been in some of those houses, and the constant sound of the lake lapping against the boulders was not something I liked very much.
Between the cabins you could make out the rock shore curving away to the point, where the crest of the hill thrust down into the lake. Just below where I was standing was the local beach, although it was not really a beach. That is, that rock pile hillside was not a natural place for a beach, but the cabin owners and the people who came for conferences had bitched loud and long enough that the trustees finally dynamited boulders and bulldozed and dumped in dirt until they'd cleared out a flat place at the edge of the lake and built a breakwater to protect it. Still, dirt is not sand, and for years when anyone stepped into the water there, creamy clouds oozed up as if the gash in the rocks were still leaking its white blood into the lake.
The hill protested even more by dropping dirt and boulders and trees onto that imposed beach whenever it felt like it. Finally a big retaining wall had to be built not so much to keep the hill back as to keep the humans away. That day, though, the place didn't look so bad. The water was perfectly clear so you could see rocks and plants on the bottom. Only a few kids were there, mostly tanning themselves on the breakwater.
After going a little way on the trail, I cut up the hillside on a path only I used. It wasn't much of a path, and it went almost straight up, but I knew how to weave through the juniper and manzanita so I didn't get all ripped up. The altitude had me panting, though, before I got to the upper trail. Even it wasn't much. In places it went directly over huge boulders. Yet after years of tread, they hardly showed any trace of the feet that moved over them constantly. Maybe if humans hung around for a million years or so, they might make some ruts.
While I was thinking about deep stuff like that I realized that I'd come up right behind our cabin. It seemed to be in pretty good shape, but, anyway, I went around the west and south sides checking the boards, like I remembered my father doing when he first got to the lake each year. Those sides took the worst beating from winter storms, and some of the boards were beginning to show it. My mother wasn't spending anything to keep that place up. Finally I walked up to the east side, which looked smaller than the rest because it was the uphill side. I sat down on the same boulder I'd seen myself on when I had the vision on Rossmoyne Drive and waited quietly for a while to see what would happen.
Nothing happened, but it didn't really surprise me. I didn't know much about visions, but if they were like the other feelings I'd had, I knew there wasn't much you could do to cause them or stop them. When they happened, they just happened. I looked around. In front of me was the cabin and beyond it the lake. On my right was a small clearing. It was covered mostly with wispy, silvery grasses and some Indian paintbrush, but bushes were edging in, and a few fir sprouts had taken hold. When I was a kid it was a lot emptier. It was where my grandfather's cabin had been. That was really the start of the whole thing.
The story of the cabin was an old one in our family. What I hadn't heard or overheard I'd pretty well guessed. Maybe you've heard of my grandfather. In his time he was pretty well-known, at least in northern California. I guess he was about the smartest man I ever met. His name was Arthur Hughes Morris, but you never saw it written like that. It was always Arthur Hughes Morris, Ph.D., Th.D., D.D. Someone finally explained to me what that all meant, but the letters still didn't tell the whole story. If my grandfather had gotten university credit for every subject he mastered in his life, he could have added a few more Ds to the list. But I guess he never did learn a lot about architecture or carpentry to judge from the cabin he built for his family.
I've seen some photos of it. It was really just one room with a living area in front and a kitchenette behind. Over the kitchen was a small loft where my mother slept when she was a girl. Grandma and Grandpa slept on a fold-down sofa in the front area. Grandpa built his little mountain shack in the early 1920s and was happy with it for several years. But about the time the grounds were getting organized in the thirties he felt that he should expand it some. My mother, his only child, was grown by then, and when they vacationed together, or when he might have guests, he felt there should be a separate room.
About this same time he met my father, who - to be honest - I guess you could call an itinerant carpenter. He'd taken a liking to the Tahoe area and was trying to find enough work to settle there. One summer my father was doing some work repairing and remodeling one of the local cabins. Grandpa and Grandma were taking a walk one evening past where he was working and stopped in for a chat. That cabin had always been more like a barn than a house, but my father was redesigning the inside to make it more suitable for humans. He didn't have much formal training or anything, but he had a feeling for materials and for space that took his work beyond plain carpentry. Even though he was pretty young, his ability was already clear, and Grandpa wasn't slow to appreciate it. Before walking on he'd invited my father to give an estimate on enlarging the shack.
A few days later my father came by and looked over the cabin. He was diplomatic enough to say little about the design. Grandpa pressed him about some ideas for remodeling, buy my father was noncommittal. Instead, he turned from the house to the lake. The shack sat on a rise just behind an outcropping of rocks. From the rocks it was possible to see over two-thirds of the lake, from Stateline in the south all the way to parts of the north shore. Even the inlet to Emerald Bay was visible below Mount Talac. Grandpa had put his cabin so that almost none of the view could be seen. Where there was something to see, there was no window.
My father walked out over the boulders and stood for several minutes watching the changing colors of the lake at evening. Finally, when pressed, he said that he couldn't do anything for several weeks because of the other project. That would take it into September, and Grandpa wasn't sure that he wanted to start anything when he would have to devote full time to his church in San Jose and couldn't supervise the construction. It was left at that. My father left, and Grandpa was "miffed," like Grandma always used to say.
In late October, Grandpa, then in San Jose, called up Frank Harmon about some church business. In the course of the conversation, Frank mentioned that my father had begun construction on Grandpa's cabin. Grandpa was struck dumb, which was pretty rare. He was the kind of person who liked to have a hand in everything, especially things that concerned him personally. He couldn't believe that someone would begin work on his house without consulting him first.
So, anyway, the story went that even though he had sermons to plan and meetings to attend, Grandpa couldn't rest until he could see for himself what my father had done. The next morning he jumped in the car - despite Grandma's protests - and drove the two hundred miles to the lake in bad weather. When he arrived at the cabin site he was amazed; my father had erected a large platform out over the rocks. The original shack had faced due south, but the new platform was set on a southwest angle. Because of the slope of the hill, the far edge of the platform reached ten feet off the ground.
For a while Grandpa just sat on a rock staring at the large deck stretched out before him. Then my father appeared carrying some boards. When Grandpa spotted him, he attacked. How dare my father begin a project without approval? Who had given him permission to build by the rocks? It wasn't even Grandpa's land. How could he buy materials in Grandpa's name without his signature? And on and on.
In his usual measured tones my father explained that he'd studied the leasehold map carefully and that the rocks and the space below did indeed belong to Grandpa's land. In fact, building behind the shack would take him off the parcel. The materials, Dad said, had cost him nothing. He avoided the question of approval.
Grandpa couldn't believe, even in those days, that someone would give all that lumber at no charge, and then, for the first time since arriving, he turned toward the shack. It wasn't there. My father had used every board to build the platform.
Now Grandpa was almost literally beside himself. He was talking so fast he could have been two people. Never in his life had a person treated him in this way: destroying his property and making off with all his belongings. The belongings, my father said, were stored in one of the buildings at the other end of the grounds. And who gave him permission to do that, Grandpa wanted to know. My father replied that Frank had helped him, but only because he thought that Grandpa had approved the plans.
Grandpa stormed off to confront Frank, but he should have known what Frank's reply would be. In the mountains people usually didn't rely on contracts and lawyers. A man's word was his contract. Frank couldn't imagine that my father didn't have permission to begin work, and given that, of course he'd helped when it was requested. Grandpa knew that Frank was right and was wise enough not to insist on seeing the belongings of the shack. Frank, in his turn, was perceptive enough to show them to Grandpa, who calmed down some and returned to the cabin site.
By that time in the afternoon, it was turning cold. The squalls over the lake were threatening to turn into the first winter storm. Grandpa found my father sitting on the deck staring out at the troubled lake. On hearing Grandpa's steps he turned to face him, and Grandpa was drawn up by the dejection he read on my father's face. My father confessed he'd done a terrible thing. He'd never before undertaken to destroy a man’s property and move his things in that way. He let his enthusiasm blind him to another's rights. He said that he would begin work immediately taking down the deck and rebuilding the shack just as it was. In addition, he would add on the extra room at no charge, if that was what Grandpa wanted.
Grandpa was perplexed. He paced the deck trying to organize things and get a handle on them. Finally, he simply asked my father why.
In response, my father walked over to the area where the shack had been, where he was keeping his equipment. He returned with a twelve-foot ladder which he took to the far edge of the platform and set up. He motioned Grandpa to climb up. Grandpa was more than a little reluctant to put himself over twenty feet up in the air on a blustery day in the presence of a man whose sanity left him in doubt, but with urging he climbed while my father steadied the ladder. After he got his head over the top of the ladder, he looked back on quizzically.
"Look, man look!" my father yelled.
What happened then was what I'd seen in the vision. Grandpa himself was never too clear on what he'd seen except to say that it was one of the most fantastic sights imaginable. From that point almost the whole lake leapt into view. He felt, he said, that for a moment he was floating over the lake itself and could almost touch the wind-tossed grey water. Then vertigo overcame him, and he started to fall. My father rushed up the ladder to steady him, but at that moment the sun broke from behind the clouds on the other side of the lake, and immediately the water was transformed to a dazzling pink-gold. The waters calmed, and for the next moments the men were transfixed by what Grandpa called the most awe-inspiring sight of his life. He could do nothing else but interpret it as a message. For years he'd hiked all around this lake and many others, but no sight had touched his soul like this one. After a while they came down the ladder and sat on the deck watching the sun set.
Grandpa returned to San Jose leaving instructions that absolutely nothing was to be done. My father worried that if he didn't take down the platform or reinforce it, the winter snow might crush it, destroying the boards. Grandpa said then so be it; he needed time for meditation and prayer.
By late spring Grandma's curiosity was so great that she insisted that Grandpa drive her to the grounds. The winter had been light that year, and when they arrived, even the dirt roads had been cleared of snow almost to the cabin site. The platform was still standing, and, although Grandpa was leery of it, Grandma and my mother ventured out onto it. They were thrilled both at the proposed size of the cabin and at the magnificent view. Grandma felt it was an inspiration that God had given to my father. Grandpa was not so sure of the source.
My father had moved to Stateline for the winter and had stayed alive with odd jobs and repair work here and there. As summer approached he was to begin some major work for one of the casinos there. Grandpa looked him up .
I've always wondered about how my grandfather and my father really got along. I mean, it always seemed very family-like from the outside, but I have the feeling it didn't begin very well. In fact, from what I've heard, it looks like Grandpa started out by trying to set my father up. Maybe that was because he didn't like the way their business relationship had started off, and he wanted to put my father in his place. Or maybe it was that he really didn't like my father.
I think part of it was that, basically, he always preferred his little mountain outhouse. He always seemed to do his best thinking in places that were small, comfortable and dark; it was like by enclosing himself he let his mind expand. On the other hand, he truly loved the mountains and was deeply moved by his experience on the ladder. He couldn't believe, he often said, that a revelation of such great beauty could be from any source other than God. But somehow I guess he found it hard to think of my father as God's messenger.
So, anyway, first he demanded that if my father was going to rebuild the cabin he'd have to have a detailed plan. Maybe he thought that my father couldn’t do blueprints, but the plans were in his hands so quickly that he became even more suspicious. They called for a two bedroom cabin with a large living and dining area, a bay window overlooking the lake, a kitchen and an indoor bathroom. There would also be plenty of room for a second floor under the high-pitched roof.
Then Grandpa said he could only afford the amount he set aside for the original room addition. That could have killed the whole thing right there, because, even though my father was pretty good at scrounging things, there was no way he could pay for a whole cabin with the price of one room. But at this point Grandma stepped in. I guess she wasn't exactly your happy camper, and, after years of roughing it in the shack, the idea of a real house with plumbing was too much to give up. She knew where the money was, and it didn't take very long for her to flush Grandpa out of that corner.
So things went ahead. By summer the framing and roofing were completed,
which amazed everyone. In July the walls and windows were all in place, and by October the interior walls were completed, and the bedrooms were livable. Actually, it didn't end up costing all that much either. My father had a great talent for producing a lot from very little when he was inspired. He'd made friends quickly in the mountains, where respect rested not on a fast mouth and a glad hand, but on sincerity and ability. His word was always his bond, and he was a very hard worker, as well as being pretty impressive physically. His sense of design and feeling for locations were gaining him a good reputation, and through his growing friendships he knew where materials could be found cheaply or even free. Sometimes he would go as far as Sacramento or San Francisco to pick up windows or doors from buildings that were being demolished. That's the way he got all the windows and stairs for the cabin, as well as complete hardwood flooring.
The funny thing was: if my father was such a whiz of a carpenter, why did it take him so long to finish the cabin? Even after I'd come on the scene there were still unlined walls in the bedrooms, and I was about eight when the second floor was finally added.
The answer was probably Grandpa again. At first maybe he dragged his feet because he was a little tight with his money. Then again, maybe he hoped that after my father had gotten the basic work done he might get tired of the delays and take off. Someone else could finish it. If that was Grandpa's plan, he obviously didn't take my mother into account, and, speaking of that, I wonder how he felt about what developed between her and my father. Considering their differences, I don't guess he was too happy about that at all.
Actually, it does seem a little strange that my parents ever got together. I suppose that a lot of women were attracted to my father. His quiet virility, his physical strength and the touch of artistic imbalance would be hard to resist. But why he should go after my mother still isn't real clear to me. It's not to put her down or anything, but I've seen pictures of her at that time, and she was not all that beautiful. It's too bad she didn't take after her mother more. Grandma was what you'd call handsome when I knew her, and she'd probably been pretty beautiful in her youth, but my mother took all her looks from Grandpa; she had his sandy red hair, freckles, and slightly pugged nose. I mean, there was nothing physically wrong with her; she was sound and healthy and all that, but I bet my father could've had his choice of a lot of others.
I don't even know if they had that much in common. In the early thirties my mother would still have been in college. And, like I said, my father didn't really have all that much formal education. Then, too, if her present personality is any guide, she probably wasn't all that easy to get along with either.
Still, whatever the reasons, they fell in love, I guess. I suppose I shouldn't complain too much about that. I understand that Grandpa did, though, but it didn't do much good. He finally gave in, and they got married in 1932. Danny was born the next year, and I came along seven years after that.
Even after there was little hope that Grandpa could get rid of my father, he still resisted any changes in the cabin. Grandma said it had to do with a Puritan streak in Grandpa. He couldn't stand to be thought pretentious. The cabin already had the luxury of its view, and Grandpa didn't want visitors making comments about a fancy cabin on top of that. At least he couldn't be blamed for nature's excesses.
Around the grounds the cabin was famous for its view, and people were always stopping by to see it. That part didn't really bother Grandpa. He was happy enough to have visitors, for there was nothing he loved more than conversation. I can't picture that cabin empty. Evenings were always filled with politics, or religion, or sports or construction talk. There were card games or Chinese checkers and hot chocolate and cookies until I was finally forced into bed, although I always stayed listening through the thin walls as long as I could manage.
There was something a little fanatic, though, in the way Grandpa resisted the installation of a second floor. Everyone told him it would give more room and help insulate the downstairs. My father already had a set of stairs stored under the cabin, but Grandpa refused everything. He seemed especially nervous if he ever found my father climbing around on the rafters, where he sometimes stored things, especially if my father was near the dormer window that overlooked the lake. Finally, the subject of the second floor just became taboo.
By the mid-1940s Grandpa's hold on things began to weaken. Grandma'd been sick for several years and died in 1945. After that Grandpa kept coming up to the lake with us, but it was like the cabin was ours now, not his. Finally, he asked my father if he would enclose the space under the cabin and make a room that he could use just for himself. My father poured a concrete floor and built a block retaining wall against the boulders. He installed a small bathroom with a shower and paneled the whole thing with knotty pine. When it was finished Grandpa was delighted and from then on spent most of his time down there. I think it reminded him of his shack. There was barely room for his large desk, a bed, a dresser and an overstuffed chair, but he loved it. A couple of years later my father finally did floor over the attic, and right away Danny and I hauled our beds up there and claimed it for ourselves. From time to time my father came up there and sat smoking his pipe and watching the lake through the dormer window, but there was certainly nothing strange or fanatic about that. It was when he seemed his calmest and most natural.
I began to get uncomfortable on the rock. The sun was at its zenith. Even in the crisp air it was burning my skin, and the rock wasn't getting softer. The manzanita bushes around me crackled in the heat, and you could almost see the sap running from the pines whose needles swiveled and shimmered in the gentle midday breeze. Sounds of voices and motors came from the lake, sometimes faint, sometimes magnified by the breeze, as though echoing through a long tube.
My head began to hurt. I got up and walked around the front and west sides of the house. My mother hadn't given me a key to the cabin, although I’d mentioned it to her. She said Frank could let me in if I needed something. I guess she was afraid of providing unsupervised beds for her pervert son. What she didn't know was that Grandpa had shown me where he kept a key to his room.
I walked to the back of the cabin and went under the back porch. I found the space under the porch floor where he used to leave the key. Even after all those years it was still there on a small ring with some others, and I let myself into the room. It appeared clean in the dim light. Shutters were still over the windows, but cracks let in enough light to see. I turned the light switch, but nothing came on. I saw there was no bulb, so I went to the bathroom and tried there. The light over the sink came on. I tried the water, and it worked. Frank must have turned the utilities on, because no one had stayed there so far that year. I looked around the room for a minute. It seemed the same as when Grandpa was there. My mother had brought down some boxes for storage and had filled the dresser with our old clothes, but this room was never rented.
I sat on the bed and then lay back. My mind seemed blank after all the remem-bering; I don't recall feeling emotions of any kind. I sort of passed out of myself and floated around the house seeing old corners and views. It wasn’t a vision, just a clear memory likeI have of some things, the way I said. But I don’t let myself think about things that way partly because of what happened that afternoon.
In the memoryI saw Grandpa sitting in the old leather rocker in the living room arguing about some new evangelist with anyone who would listen. My father was putting in a new window in the bedroom where he'd made a desk for my mother. She was baking brownies for some friends who were coming over after dinner. Danny and I were roaming around and over the boulders in front of the house looking for a good place to set our chipmunk trap. Then I was back in Grandpa's room, watching myself lying peacefully on the bed in the dark. I seemed so calm, and that was why it was so strange when I saw the first tear roll out of my right eye and onto the blue bedspread. Soon another fell from the other eye. For some reason I was really crying. It was just the loneliness, I guess, or mainly that, but there was something else I saw, or couldn't quite see, that scared me.
I got up and went to the bathroom and stuck my whole face under the faucet, but still it continued. I got out of that room damn fast and began crashing my way along the path, scraping myself on trees, falling over rocks, running like hell from something I couldn't even see. Finally I found myself at the crest of the hill. I tripped over an exposed root and sprawled between two great boulders. Gradually, whatever it was left me. The sun seemed a warm, soothing hand on my back, the exhaustion of the past weeks and all their emotions closed over me, and I fell asleep in the sand.
It was mid-afternoon when I woke up. I felt the terror returning, so I got to my knees, pressed my forehead against one of the boulders and began praying like crazy. Deliver me from this, I prayed, don't let me fall into it. I'll become pure, pure, pure. I'll just eat, sleep and work. My whole life will be dedicated to good. I'll help everyone. I'll go to anything religious that comes along. I'll learn; you'll see. Only Jesus will be a better Christian. I'll be celibate. Lust won't come near me. I'll save myself for Marlene when we're married. All my energy will go into good works. Just keep that darkness away. You'll see. You'll see.
And in the days that followed I was as good as my word, even better. I was up before six every morning. I set out a cross country course with the same amount of flat areas and hills as the one at home. I ran it every morning and then ran down to the waterfront, jumped in and swam five laps from the beach to the breakwater. Then I went back to the dorm, dried and dressed and was the first for breakfast. I even helped the cook set up the tables.
I did anything Frank assigned me and more. He had to tell me to slow it down some or he'd have to send some of the others home, but I still took on the hardest, dirtiest jobs and did them with passion. As my mind changed to purity, my body responded, too. With all the exercise and work my chest and shoulders began to thicken and become harder, like my legs. I measured myself on a board we used for that outside the cabin, and during the last year I'd grown taller, too.
I stayed a little apart from the rest of the crew and avoided any situations where I might get paired up with one of the girls. I knew how that happened as the summer wore on, and I wasn't going to be tempted. I joined in for volleyball or basketball, but never went along when the group went to dances around the lake. I wouldn't even play ping-pong with one of the girls. I was developing a reputation as a work freak, or a fitness freak, or maybe just a queer, but I didn't care. It was better like that.
I dove into religion with real fervor. If there were two church services at the chapel on Sunday, I attended both. Most of the conferences were religious, and if they permitted outsiders at evening meetings, I went. Instead of socializing, I read the Bible every night. Well, sometimes I dozed off while reading - like, maybe after about two minutes.
Sexually I was a saint. I didn't even beat off. Well, maybe only once in a while, but not for fun. You know; better that than a messy bed. But I did it passionlessly, clearing my mind of all thoughts. It was like milking a cow, like pissing or taking a dump. It was just the passage of another troublesome secretion.
Frank sometimes seemed a little concerned. He'd worked with enough young people to know this change was exaggerated, even for a teenager, but I assured him I was OK. I felt really great: clean, active, learning, helping, fulfilled spiritually. And yet...And yet...
You remember my idea that maybe kids who knew about sex smell each other out, like dogs in heat? I've never done any scientific experiments to prove that, but if there's anything to it, it's in the eyes, not the nose. I found that out one evening at a prayer meeting.
Jim Eisenman had gotten to know one of the visiting evangelists and had made a few points with him by organizing an attempt to save the souls of the crew, which were always in danger of sinking into perdition, being so close to the fleshpots and casinos at Stateline. Jim and I had become great friends - so he thought - due to my fervent pursuit of religious enlightenment. He often came into our room as I was sleeping over the Bible and got me into "conversations" about the glories of being saved. This night he did me the honor of introducing me to the speaker, a well-known pulpit pounder and Bible beater, and I did my best to look all impressed, humble and pious. I took a seat on the right side of the room and tried to prepare my soul for the upcoming rapture, which had somehow eluded me so far.
As the meeting progressed the speaker tried to keep it low-keyed and cool, an approach he maybe thought would be better accepted by teenagers. It had the same effect on me as reading the Bible: I started to doze off. In an effort to avoid that, I began studying the details of the dining room where we were meeting. A notched board about six feet up the wall ran its length and had been lined with bright-colored plates. I began to count them and then to divide them into colors and design types - anything to keep my mind going after a hard day.
Suddenly I realized that someone was studying me. Brigitta Lindstrom, an exchange student from Norway, was looking straight at me. At first I looked away like I'd done with the girls all summer. Besides, she was going around with Eisenman, and I really didn't need that complication. But somehow I couldn't stay away from her eyes. What was it she wanted from me? We'd barely talked during the time I'd been there. What could she...? And then I looked directly into her eyes, and I knew she knew about me, sexually, that is. And what's more I knew she knew I knew...well, you know.
We were both sitting toward the back of the group on opposite sides, so I guess no one was aware of what passed between us. I couldn't believe it, though, and exploded into a laugh that I tried to disguise as a cough. She dropped a hymnal and bent over to pick it up. The evangelist had lost his cool and was starting to foam at the mouth, so the rest of the crew was distracted and didn't notice us.
The effect of this new knowledge on me was to make me more careful than ever. It was interesting to know that messages could pass that way, but I now made a great point to let myself be nowhere near Brigitta. It almost worked.
One Saturday, though, the work was going late. A conference was to arrive any moment, but the laundry hadn't been delivered. Sheets and towels that were usually in on Friday hadn't arrived by noon, Saturday. The girls hadn't been able to finish the women's dorm, and Frank was in a panic. The laundry called to say that the truck would be there any minute, so he asked me to stay at the top of the hill during lunchtime and to run the sheets to the dorm as soon as they got there.
When the truck arrived I loaded the large bundles into the jeep and shot down the hill to the dorm. The area was deserted. All the girls were eating. I was hungry, too, and quickly made the trips into the dorm lobby, leaving the stuff on the large split-log table there. Just as I was carrying in the last of the sheets, I had the feeling there was some movement in the long hall that stretched to the back of the building. It appeared like someone had moved quickly from one room to another. No one should have been there at that time, but I knew from experience how the local brats sometimes got in and messed around.
Slowly I walked down the hall glancing into each room until I got to the one where I thought I'd seen the movement. I looked in but could see no one. I stepped into the room and crossed to the window. For a minute I stood looking over the gleaming blue lake. The colors at noon were so vivid after the greys of L.A. A large cone from a sugar pine in front of the dorm had fallen on a boulder and broken open a little. A bluejay, very military in his blue and grey uniform and cocked cap, was busy picking at the nuts or bugs or whatever it is that jays like about pine cones. On the waterfront the life guard was yelling at some of the kids who were running on the long pier. Other boys sat fishing in the bright sun, although anyone could tell them it was better after five o'clock.
I thought about the virtues of being a kid and what it might cost to be one again. I'm not really a very ascetic person, and the routine I'd lived the last few weeks was beginning to tell. Being a kid had a lot to say for it. There was order and usually calm and a warm bed. There were laps and hands on shoulders and games and long summers. Even school wasn't all that bad. And, for me, there'd been a lively, warm family, respected and honored, that had brought me acceptance and security. It was all gone - had been gone for years - but the realization of the loss had only come to me that summer when I really needed some help.
I hadn't let myself think about it since that day in Grandpa's room, but I'd seen something besides the way our family used to be. When I saw myself crying on the bed, I also saw another thing, but it scared me so much I wouldn't let myself see it. Behind the bed the block wall was gone, and there was just...nothing. It was just a big hole, a void, like a huge chasm. Now I made myself think about it.
Maybe chasms had bad press. I mean, maybe they had reputations they didn't deserve. They were always being pictured as jagged and dark and full of bad breath and things. And you were supposed to fall endlessly, bouncing around on sharp rocks or spears of ice or whatever else was down there. Maybe chasms could be mauve and tan and burgundy with decorator designs and walls that turned into doors and outdoors indoors and spaces for shelves full of leather bound books and objects d'art. Maybe as you fell down the chasm it was like falling between the pages of your life, and you could get a big eraser and erase the parts you didn't like, so many letters per foot of freefall per second per second. And when you reached the last page and erased the last letter, what happened to you? Did you start on something new, or did you just disappear - poof - and the big eraser keep on falling through empty pages?
I forced myself to pull back. I focused again on the lake, sparkling confidently in midday light. Things were pulling apart too fast. It was like that space in the wall - a hole opening faster than it could be filled. All the control, all the planning just weren't doing it. What the hell was I doing thinking about chasms in favorable terms? I knew where that came from. It was my father. And I knew that I couldn't go his way. Even when I was only eleven, caught up in all the noise that surrounded his death, I'd vowed to myself never to go that route. Regardless of where my life would take me, I swore I would see it through til life wore itself out.
But why was this happening now? Why was he pulling at me? Who the hell was he? Why did he and I have visions? What were his secrets? Where did he come from? Who were his people? He never said.
If I was afraid of my father's way, though, what was the alternative - my mother’s? My mother whose banker's soul filled her house with "heirlooms?" It was like you could fill up the void if you just saved enough old junk. From the monster high boy in the dining room with all my grandmother's china to the re-re-reupholstered sofas in the front room to the linen closet. The linen closet, my God! What if my brain ended up like that? Who knew where those ghoulish rags came from? What dead ancestor wiped his ass with that towel? Who died under that blanket? Who screwed over those sheets? Did I want a head full of fucked up, ragtag ideas - or dreams of ideas - hallowed and followed generation to generation til only echoes and shadows of their substances remained?
I could see a little reflection of my face in the window. What the hell was I? Was I crazy? Was I just another part of my parents' battleground? Or was I only some accident of shadows dancing on the edge of the void?
I couldn't stand it. I had to get away from those thoughts. I turned, and in front of me, partly hidden behind the open door, was Brigitta watching me. Maybe I'd known she was there all along. We stared at each other for a few seconds. Then I walked over to her, put my arms around her and kissed her. When she kissed me back, I got very passionate.
What's there to say? We were in a bedroom. I locked the door and we fucked.

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