Gone

Gone

I don’t know how I’m writing this.

I did it. Sold the beach cottage.

I’ll miss sitting on my sunlit porch drinking my morning coffee and listening to the surf. I remember when we first heard the telephone pole speakers in town announce “This is a test of the Coastal Outside Warning System - COWS” and the mooing sound started, blaring, repeating, stampeding through the streets as it called us to join the herd and escape a tsunami. So much more creative than the old air raid siren test. Shit, I loved seeing the look on tourist faces expecting to see a bunch of black angus running down the beach. Plus the sound of cows reminded me of our old farm.

Betty and I bought the weather beaten, cedar shingled bungalow a few lanes back from the beach when you could still make good money farming in eastern Oregon. We were supposed to be relaxing in retirement, but today I sold our cottage: the farm was supposed to fund our season of sunsets, like the accountant calculated, but since the war choked the supply of oil - no affordable gas, diesel, mortgages, fertilizer, food, or future. Somehow black sludge from a Middle East desert was important for my family. Way more important than we knew. He said we were “energy independent”. Ha.

What good are all those big windmills standing like tall fickle fans along the Columbia gorge and those groves of black solar panels - the big flat eggplants of energy. I knew the price of gas and oil would go up, but come on now- not this much. And who knew that Arab oil was needed to make my fertilizer nitrogen out of air and water. Shit fire, man. That biologist at the big Ag Conference said that 50% of the nitrogen in our bodies comes from the fertilizer that feeds the plants, that feeds us and our animals. Maybe he shoulda thought of that before starting another war.

Oh well. Can’t have it all. Can’t have a cottage at the coast or a farmhouse on a thousand acres. Who am I kidding? I thought I’d have a son who’d drive a big old John Deere tractor with AC and plow our fields. What I got was a cell phone addicted daughter driving around Portland in a bright green Kia looking for an affordable house for her and me. Don’t get me wrong, she’s a good girl. People pay her to teach English. She’s smart like Betty was. Both of them always trying to teach me about writers and books they were reading while I had both eyes and one ear catching the game on TV.

The realtor said the fella who bought our beach house is one of those stock brokers - futures traders from the city. I wonder how much money he made selling my future. Looked him up on the Google. Skinny guy with a man bun, two chins and pasty skin. Even if he didn’t buy our beach house out from under us, he looks like someone I wouldn’t like.

Time to get off the porch and take one last walk on the beach. Gonna miss the squeaky gate in my yard’s cedar picket fence. Each grayed plank bears that patina of lichen splotches and wisps of moss. But this old cottage is now gone. Wife gone from cancer. Farm gone. Pick up’s loaded with the last of our stuff. Dog’s with the daughter in the Kia. Sometimes I think the dog’s doing better than all of us, and that’s not saying much. He’s a good dog.

***

I walked north toward the big sea stack rock around 9:02 PM. Favorite blue jeans, my faded red ‘I May Be Wrong - but I doubt it’ T-shirt, Teva sandals, Budweiser in hand. It didn’t get much better. The marine cloud deck dissipated and a beautiful golden sunset was in the making. Young couples strolled hand in hand on the firm sand of the receding tide. Two shirtless boys, maybe ten or twelve years old who must have just arrived for vacation, are jumping in the surf and splashing each other. Youthful exuberance protects them from the cold. People my age need a wetsuit. A loveable lab galloped at waters’ edge with a sopping yellow tennis ball dripping from his mouth. A woman with long brown hair, a white linen top, and a billowing knee-length red skirt walked toward the sea from the hotel Adirondack chairs. Each one a different color like a row of Skittles. Another evening for peace and perspective.

From a distance, it seemed the lady in red was walking rather deliberately toward the water. Like a woman on a mission. For what, I don’t know. Betty used to walk like that.

Then it happened.

She walked straight into the ocean and didn’t stop.

She pushed her way through the first set of waves and with bouncing steps reached the shallows’ edge and stepped into the deep blue trough just beyond the breakers. Under she went - hair floating on the sea foam - each strand fanning out like tentacles of a jelly fish.

I quickened my pace. She didn't surface. I figured she had to be holding her breath. I remembered what that doctor told us in the volunteer first responder class. Even if she tried to drown herself, humans can’t really hold their breath long enough to pass out. Within minutes she’d have to gasp from pressing air hunger. Cold salt water would rush into her throat. If her larynx failed to clamp shut, water would fill her lungs. Then the tension in her chest would ease. She might have the sense of breathing, but it would be water. She’d feel a peace and calmness come over her. Without struggling, or at least trying to change her mind and save herself, she could last maybe one hundred seconds before she would black out. In another one hundred seconds her heart would stop.

My watch read 9:17. One hundred seconds plus one hundred seconds was all I had.

I wondered if anyone else saw this? Where was the beach patrol? I broke into a run, jumped into the surf, and bounced through the first set of waves till I reached the deep water edge. Where was she? Her floating hair was gone. Was she another Virginia Woolf with stone filled pockets? But she had no overcoat. I dove down but couldn't see or feel anything. My eyes burned. I got exhausted swimming in jeans. I saw a floppy haired lifeguard swimming out toward me with his orange torpedo float. I could barely keep myself above water. Finally someone was coming to help find her. Or was it me?

I sank below the surface.

The tension in my chest eased.

I felt I could breathe.

I don’t remember leaving the beach,

or even seeing myself leaving,

or that I was gone.

I don’t know how I’m writing this.

***

The lifeguard signaled for an ambulance and rescue team. Joanie’s crew was first to arrive. She was a strong middle-aged big-boned gal attending community college part-time. Her paramedic was an older guy they called “Chief”, even though he held no official rank in any organization anyone could remember. The third crewperson was Noah, fresh out of his EMT program. Their red rig arrived siren blaring, rack of cherries and berries all lit up.

“Dispatch- Joanie here from Ocean Rescue. Got a fully dressed elderly male in the water. Bystanders say he just ran into the waves and sank. They’re pulling him to shore now. He’s way out there.”

“Copy that Ocean Rescue.”

As they unloaded the gurney and gear Joanie turned to her crew.

“You think he was like a Virginia Woolf or something?”

“Who’s Virginia Woolf?” asked Chief.

“I think she’s one of those werewolf chicks from the Twilight movies,” said Noah.

Joanie shook her head. “I swear, sometimes I wish I lived on a farm with my dog and a herd of cows.”