John Sayles - The Anarchist's Convention and Other Stories

There were plastic benches behind a low stone wall, with steps leading down to the beach every hundred yards or so. There was a plain of sand strewn with a kind of seaweed Brian had never seen. Giant brown peapods, as long as Brian was tall. The beach was alive with reddish brown squirrels that twitched from spot to spot. Brian squatted at the edge of the water and waited for a wave to reach his hands. Up the beach a ways an old wooden pier stretched out into the ocean a good quarter-mile. Brian patted his face with seawater and returned to sit behind the wall. He watched the waves and ate his doughnut.

Two men were walking along the wall toward him. They were too far off to see any detail of their faces. One was a lot taller than the other. They came closer. Older men, both wearing canvas sneakers. Kind of rummy-looking.

"Mind if we siddown, young fella?"

Brian didn't see how he could refuse. They weren't going to shake any change out of him, though, and once they realized that they'd probably leave. He nodded to them. The tall one sat at the other end of the bench and the stocky one, a Chicano with an amazing crop of thick, black, wino hair, offered his hand.

"Pleasetomeeyou pleasetomeeyou berry please," he said and pumped Brian's hand like he was shaking an aerosol can. "You know Misser Horse? He own tot big buildin by the school, berryberry weltymon, I use to work por him ohyes tot not ri' Donnydonny?"

"Slow down, Cervantes," said the tall one. "Take your time."

"Ohyes, Donnydonny. Slowdown." He sat next to Brian, smiling with a set of beautiful white teeth.

"Don't think I recognize you," said the tall one. He had a small blue Navy bag that he was fishing his hand through. "You just get into town?"

"Yuh."

"My name is Daniel Boone," he said, "and the fella next to you is Cervantes. He don't make much sense no more but he's a helluva good man. What's your handle?"

There was no way he could top them, even if he made one up. "Brian McNeil."

"And where do you hail from?"

"East Orange."

"Oh yeah. I been there." He winked at Brian. "You thumbin?"

"Yuh."

"Thought so. I went on the road a while, I was your age. Till the war come."

Daniel Boone's white hair was still wet, combed sideways across his head. It looked like he had pressed his pants by folding them into a square and putting them under something heavy, they were covered with checkerboard creases. He wore a red flannel shirt and had metal teeth. They were aluminum or something, whenever he opened his mouth there was a flash.

"Say, Jersey," he said, "you haven't seen an old fella down here this morning, big old fighter's ears and a green overcoat? Can't really talk, just kind of grunts and gurgles?"

"Tot Stofey he grung he groang he is so bar to unnerston ohyesohyes."

Brian said that he hadn't seen anyone.

"Funny, he's usually down here by now." Daniel frowned and pulled a quart bottle of Thunderbird from his bag. "Maybe he decided to take his breakfast in bed. Care for a pull, young fella?"

It couldn't have been much after seven and Brian didn't like wine, but it was an occasion. He had just seen the Pacific for the first time, he had made it to California, and here was an alky offering instead of asking. He took a modest gulp.

His father never touched wine. "It's a sneaky, back-door way to drink," he'd say. "If you're going to bend an elbow don't be diddling around with any of your glorified fruit juice. Give me an honest glass of beer or some Irish whiskey, something to keep the fire going inside." The old man drank flat beer at breakfast, sheltered from the evening's chill at the Hibernian, and carried a pint bottle of fuel for his night watch at the freight yard. He had a difficult time staying warm.

"Speakin of bed," said Daniel, "where'd you put up for the night? Mountains?"

"Yuh."

"That's good. Town cops'1l bust your ass you try to lay out on the beach. Me and Cervantes have been setting up in the dead-car pile back of the Earl Scheib body shop there. Had me a Cadillac last night. Best sleep I had in months."

Cervantes took a hit and passed the bottle back to Daniel. Both of them lipped the neck. Brian had tried to pour his directly to the back of his throat without touching glass.

"You wouldn't know I just come out of the hospital, would you?"

Daniel looked like his best move would be to check right back in, but Brian let it ride. "Nope."

"I mean, do I look like a dyin man? I just been in intensive care three months, fell down the stairs over to the Hotel Sutter and fractured my hip. Lost forty pounds up to the VA, drippin chemicals into my veins from a bottle. You believe it? Lemme tell you, New York, it was pretty much touch-and go. Thought my number was up. They called my next of kin, my sister-in-law, and explained how I shouldn't never drink again or it'd kill me." He snuggled the bottle in his lap. "So here I am trying to commit hairy Carey. Don't have the guts to jump off that pier, so I'm taking the slow boat." Daniel Boone smiled his metal smile.

"You know Misser Carey Misser Carey, he ron a boosher chop? Many many meats ohyesohyes."

"Not that Carey, Cervantes. Take it easy."

Brian could feel the sun on the back of his head now. It gave a golden edge to the wheeling gulls. Cervantes grinned next to him. For a wino he didn't smell bad at all, probably better than Brian with his road-funk. The ocean breeze, maybe.

"It blows through the palm trees," the old man used to say, swaying gently over a stein of beer or sitting in a booth as far from the jukebox as possible, "blows warm, so warm, and you can smell the fruit trees of the Polynesian islands in it. Sweet and warm." The old man smelled thickly sweet, smelled of oranges gone to mash. The watch shack he manned each night at the freight yard had originally been the stall where they held all the fruit that shipped in, in the days before the trucks took it over. The smell was part of the wood, it had gotten into the work jacket the old man always wore. When he walked into the Hibernian the regulars would wince and shake their heads. "Good Lord if it isn't McNeil," they used to say, "with our daily dose of vitamin C."

"You vote, young fella?" asked Daniel.

Brian shook his head. "Not old enough. I'm eighteen next month."

"Well, you didn't miss much. It's a bitch, Election Day, always has been. For starters, they don't let the liquor stores open till the polls close. So unless you scored a lot on Monday you got to go dry most of the day. And you can forget pan- handlin, there's so many jokers out with pamphlets and flyers and buttons, vote this, vote that, send some thief to the statehouse. Everybody just fixes their eyes straight ahead and clamps their hands shut in their pockets and won't stop for nothin. Poor scufflin wino don't have a chance, all that competition. Took us all day to make this little quart here and if Cervantes hadn't walked off with a six-pack of beer from the campaign headquarters in the Sutter it would have been an awful cold night."

Daniel sent the bottle down again. They seemed to be taking smaller pulls to stretch out the little that was left. Brian didn't like what it did to the roof of his mouth. Cervantes took out a round tobacco tin and some papers and began to roll a cigarette. His fingers were the same color as the tobacco. He worked quickly and didn't spill a flake.

A patrol car cruised up on the street behind them and stopped a couple hundred feet away. Daniel hid the Thunderbird between his legs.

"You see who that is, Cervantes? That Price? I can't make him out with the sun off the windshield there."

"Doan know Donnydonny, the sun he big doan see."

"Price works mornings, usual. He'll pinch you for havin an open bottle in view. We shouldn't of thrown the bag away."