big beach 2
Big Beach II/ the local
“Let’s GO!!!” Anais shouted, standing in the hallway. She wanted to go “rafting” on the river with Ares. Adam remained motionless, supine on the couch looking at his I-pad, Dexter snoring next to him. Clearly it was my turn to take them. We were spending a week in Little River. Adam had bought these huge orange blow-up rafts that we could plop into the river and drift with the current. That morning I had filled them up with air, one foot pump at a time. Now, I was packing towels and sunscreen and a magazine into a tote bag that sported the phrase “Don’t Panic, Eat Organic!” Ares was looking for a pair of shorts, and Anais was standing in the hallway in her new navy blue “tankini” impatiently telling him to “Hurry UP!!!” When we were finally ready to go, we smooshed the enormous puffy rafts into the car somehow, and headed out.
Big River flows into the ocean here, where Big Beach is. People hang out by the riverbank with their kids and dogs and it has both a peaceful and festive atmosphere on a nice day like this one. I found a parking spot in the shade of a tree, and we started to unpack the car. I looked around for a good place on the riverbank to put down towels, where I could watch Ares and Anais. As I looked around for a place to sit down, I was also surveying the river’s depth and current. Now mind you, the last time any of us had done this was during the recent drought. Ares and his friend Sean were forced to get out of their kayak and push it at times, the water level had been so low. It was was quite a bit higher now, and it looked like it was flowing pretty fast, but it was still a fairly bucolic setting. A man threw a Frisbee to his dog, who jumped into the air and caught it expertly. A mom and dad were sitting on a blanket next to the river’s edge, laughing as their kids tossed rocks into the water.
As I was trying to decide where to make ‘basecamp,’ Anais started toting her raft, not to the riverbank, but to the underpass, towards Big Beach. “Where are you going?” I shouted after her. “To the beach!” she answered, not bothering to look back. Ares and I looked at each other. He shrugged and took hold of his raft and followed her with the resigned air of a big brother who was “used to it”. I locked the car and picked up my tote bag and the towels and followed them. Anais kept going until we got to Big Beach. We stopped at an enormous driftwood log and I put down my stuff. Anais and Ares put down their rafts near me. I took them in for a moment. Her delicate features and cheerful disposition belied an inner toughness. She was beautiful, to be sure, but also strong and fierce, a wild cayote of a girl. He, underneath his front of worldly sophistication, sarcasm and handsomeness, was sensitive and sort of delicate, and hummingbird-nectar sweet. A familiar wave of something washed over me. But I shook it off.
Ares climbed into his raft and lied down serenely taking in the scene. Anais was taking off her beach cover up and staring at him. “What are you doing?” she demanded. “Resting” he said. “C’mon!” she said, kicking his raft. “Let’s go!” He looked at her blankly, tiredly. “All in good time” came the reply in his old man voice. Man, he could really make me laugh. “I’ll go in with you.” I offered. “Nah, I’ll go.“ said Ares. After several minutes of shoe removal, stretching, and deliberations, all on his part, they trudged towards the water dragging their rafts behind them.
Paused at the water’s edge, they were talking about something, pointing at something, but I couldn’t hear. I gave my immediate surroundings a good once over. A dog was digging a hole with determination. Someone walked by and joked about it trying to get to China amid much laughter. Nearby, a family had come to the same log against which I was leaning. They had brought a picnic basket and were settling in on their blankets.
One of them, a tall, heavily tattooed mom, took her kids, a boy and a girl, to the water. She immediately began yelling at the little boy, who was brandishing a stick at the even littler girl. The little girl seemed oblivious to the danger, either because she was too young to understand, or, more likely, she was just inured. The mom was really mad though. You could tell she was sick of having to protect the girl from her own son. I felt bad for the little boy though. Some boys just can’t resist doing stuff like waving a stick around like it’s a sword. They can’t help it. The mom had probably liked him better, and had probably treated him better before she’d had the girl. Once she had that baby girl, I imagined that her little boy looked less like her darling first born, and more and more like just an irritating, reckless kid with a sharp stick.
I looked over at the dad, who was also rather lavishly tattooed. He sported a pretty impressive beard, and he was also large. I’m not saying that either of them were fat, they weren’t. They were just really tall, and, well, big. I felt sort of puny by comparison. It was probably kind of reassuring to have a mom and dad who looked like they could kick someone’s ass. I know I’d never mess with a kid whose parents looked like they’d easily win a bar brawl.
I looked out at the ocean. Ares and Anais were still pretty close to the beach, but were floating now, in their rafts. A young man in jeans and a hoodie walked by in front of me. His two dogs trotted next to him. One had a stick in its mouth. A local, I thought to myself. You can tell the locals from the tourists after a while. The dogs were not on leashes, which normally would have irritated me. But I learned a long time ago not to mess with locals. I picked up my Vanity Fair and tried to find something to read. Vanity Fair is a very social climbing sort of magazine. It’s reserved for starlets, socialites, billionaires and moguls. You’d better be old school Hollywood royalty, Natalie Wood style say, or beyond glamorous, like John F. Kennedy Junior, to be of interest to Vanity Fair.
I looked up to see what the A’s were doing. They were still floating in the water. A dog was swimming near them. It was a peaceful, unwindy, sunny day. Some more people were coming to the beach from the parking area under the bridge. Two different, unrelated families had tiny newborn babies with them. Who would bring a newborn baby here? I wondered. One of the babies was crying, that horrid, jagged squall they make. It really might be the world’s worst sound. It’s specifically designed to make you do anything to stop it. If you’re half-way sane, that means you learn how to soothe, how to rock, how to pace, to comfort the baby, and make it stop that way. If you let it drive you crazy, or if you are already crazy, you may shake the baby to stop the noise, or throw the baby out the window. At this point, hearing that sound made me unsure which category I was in. That baby needs to be indoors, I thought, in a cool, dark, quiet place, so it can recover from the rude trauma of crashing into this world.
I looked back at the water. The bright orange rafts had drifted out a bit further from the sand. Behind me, the tattooed giants were unpacking the food they’d brought. That is, the mom was unpacking food. The dad was drinking a beer, willfully oblivious to the drama of the giant mom’s growing hatred of her stick weilding son. That little boy has no idea, I thought sadly, how foolish, how reckless he is for gradually, day by day, stick by stick, sawing at the rope his mother’s affection with that imaginary sword of his. He can’t possibly know how precious her love and protection are.
“Are those your kids?”
The voice of a man cuts into my thoughts.
“What?” I ask, shading my eyes to make out the figure of a man, standing in front of me. It’s the young local man with the two dogs I saw walk by earlier. Now he is a dark sillouette against the bright sun, the blacked out shapes of his dogs are nearby.
“Those kids on the orange rafts. Are they your kids?” he repeats.
“Yes. Why?” I say, looking out at the water. As I do, I realize with alarm that they are much further off now. The two orange rafts have moved very quickly toward the open sea.
“They’re being taken out with the tide” he says.
I am silent, struck dumb from the effort of trying to take in what he is saying.
“They’re in trouble!” he says. He is calm, but he is almost shouting.
I get up from the log, and start running towards the water far to the right of where I had been sitting. As I run, others on the beach are becoming aware of the situation, one woman runs towards me with a phone in her outstretched hand, a look of anguish on her face. The gesture is kind, but her expression frightens me. I grab it gratefully, still running and try to dial 911. I had left my phone in the car like a moron. We are all looking out at the waves as they crash into the side of the cliffs. I am trying to see, in the distance and the refractal glare, where the rafts are now.
“Don’t call 911 yet!” a young woman admonishes me. “I know CPR and I have a wet suit in my trunk.” What a fucking idiot I think, fumbling with the phone in my hand. “Wow” she says, shaking her head. “This does NOT look good.” As I try to concentrate on dialing 911, I realize I am being asked for a password. A different, better lady comes near me and seeing my confusion, takes the phone from my hand. “Maybe there’s an override for emergencies?” Meanwhile, I see that the rafts are being thrown around violently in the white water that churns between the cliffs and the open ocean. The thought occurs to me that a person can’t survive on their own out there. The good lady hands me back the borrowed phone with a thumbs up gesture.
“911 what’s you’re emergency” a lady says. She seems almost bored. “I’m on Big Beach in Mendocino” I hear myself say, and then I say what I can’t bear to think. “My kids are being washed out in the tide!” It sounds horrible. “Please send someone out here!” My voice comes out tinny and desperate. I feel ineffectual and scared. “Ma’am, stay on the line. I am sending help but I need you to answer some questions for me. What are the ages and sex of the juveniles?”
“A seventeen year old boy and a thirteen year old girl” I say.
“What is the location of the juveniles?”
“Big Beach, near the cliffs, on the north side of the beach…” but as I tell her this, I realize that I can’t see them anymore. But then, all of a sudden, I make out one of the rafts as it is tossed high up in the air, casually, almost jauntily by the waves, and turned completely upside down. I see, with a sharp flip in my stomach, that it is empty.
“What are the juveniles wearing?” the 911 lady continues in a monotone. I wish she’d stop calling them “the juveniles” like that.
“The boy is wearing a white t-shirt and orange Hawaiian shorts and the girl is wearing a navy blue tankini.” As I say these things I have the sickening thought that they want this information, not for rescuing, but for identification purposes. I am actively trying to remain calm. I am forcing myself not to panic. I want to scream at her “Get someone out here now!” and “Stop calling them ‘the juveniles’!” but I can’t. I have to be polite. She’s my only lifeline.
The young local man is pulling his hoodie over his head, taking off his shoes and then his jeans. “I guess Imma hafta go in” he says to no one in particular. I don’t try to stop him. I watch him swim out to the sand bar. Oddly, his dogs follow him into the water. No matter what happens now, I think, that young local man is a hero.
As I watch him, still on the phone with the 911 lady, a woman comes running up to me from the left, or bridge side of the beach. “I just saw from over there a body being thrashed against the rocks!” She is yelling this and gesturing towards the last place I saw the rafts, which are no longer visible. This just keeps getting gruesomer and more horrifying by the second. I look up and see some uniformed men standing way up on the cliffs above me to my right. Why are they so far away? They can’t do anything from up there I think wildly. They are looking down and talking into walkie-talkies. I say to the 911 lady, “I haven’t seen my kids for a long time now. Is someone coming?”
“Ma’am” she exhales, annoyed. “ Just stay on the line no matter what. Do NOT hang up the phone. We are sending help but it takes time.”
At that moment I have a flashing sense that I probably won’t ever see my children alive again. Almost simultaneously, I realize that if they are both gone, I am out. And no one will be mad at me. This is both scary and reassuring at the same time. It would only work if they are both gone though. If one survives I’ll still have something to live for, and I’ll have to stay around. Otherwise, no one can blame me if I want to be with them I think blindly. Somehow, this thought soothes my ever increasing sense of panic. I won’t be in trouble. The voice in my head repeats it, like a mantra. No on would blame me. The idea of facing this world without them is impossible to me, unfathomable. I wondered if you get to be with them if you, you know, go out a different way than they did, a taboo way. Or do you get sent to somewhere where you can’t find them, because you did the unthinkable and took the coward’s way out. Clearly, I was losing it on the inside, while remaining outwardly, deceptively calm on the outside. Were these the thoughts of a crazy person? Or was this perfectly within reason under the circumstances?
I hear a buzzing sound from the bridge side of the water, which snaps me out of my reverie, and after a few seconds, I see two jet skis, each driven by a wet-suited man shooting towards the white water churning by the cliffs, where I last saw the rafts. Just then, I see a lone figure standing on the sand bar, and feel a rising dread. It’s the young man I think. What has he seen out there? Why is he just standing there? Why has he given up? Slowly, defeatedly, the tiny, faraway figure goes into the water and begins to swim towards me. Everything is happening at once, somehow both too fast to process and in slow motion. The figure emerges from the water and I realize that it’s not the young man at all, but a girl in a navy blue tankini. It’s Anais, now walking towards me on the beach. She is crying and has a look on her face I’ve never seen on her before this moment. It’s despair. Why? I think. What has she seen? What does she know to make her look this way?
Now, one of the jet skis is coming toward the beach. The wet-suited man is driving it, and there is something on the back. It looks like a body. I run to Anais pulling off my hoodie as I run, and put it over her head and wrap my arms around her shivering body. At the same time, I am looking at the jet ski as it approaches. The body is slumped on the back, inert. I feel sick. I can’t bear to look, but I can’t look away. Anais is alive, which means that no matter what happens now, I have to stick around and face it. But I don’t know if I can live without Ares. Ever since he was born I have grown around him, changed into someone he needs me to be. But I can’t leave Anais either. I could never ever do that to her. Somehow I am going to have to learn to live without Ares. The thought of this makes me feel panicky, queezy, I feel like I’m going to throw up. But I can’t. Not now.
As the jet-ski gets closer, an arm rises up from the otherwise still figure on the back. It’s Ares waving to me. I am sick with relief, filled with the twin senses of gratitude and humility. The jet-ski skids onto the sand, and the wet suited paramedic unbuckles Ares from the back. He is walking towards me. He is in one piece. I run to him and put my arms around him. Someone is handing me a beach towel, and I wrap it around him. He is covered in cuts and scrapes. The paramedic leads the three of us to a drift wood log, sits us down, and starts examining Ares. He looks into his eyes with a small flashlight, fishes an emergency blanket, on of those metallic sheets, out of his backpack and covers Ares and Anais with it. He tells us to huddle together for warmth.
A paramedic vehicle drives toward us from the bridge side of the beach, and men jump out, running to us with medical bags. Now the second jet-ski is coming back from the cliffs. The young man is on the back, his face is bloody. One of his dogs apparently bit him in the water. Ares and Anais are led to the paramedics truck and get in. I tell them I’ll meet them on the other side of the bridge after I get our stuff. The young man is refusing treatment or help. He is gesturing towards his dogs, and pulling on his jeans as he speaks to the wet-suited paramedic who brought him back from the cliffs.
I walk over to the log where I left our towels and shoes, my tote bag, and the Vanity Fair. They seem like relics of another era. The giant tattooed family is eating their lunch. They stare at me blankly. I walk under the bridge, toward the paramedic truck, which is parked next to an ambulance and a paramedic helicopter. Ares and Anais are being treated inside the ambulance with heat packs and bandages. Ares’ hands are cut deeply, the skin on his fingers is pruned and cut into ribbons. He has lacerations all over his back, arms and legs. They are both still shivering. They are being asked a lot of questions. Did they hit their heads at all? Did they inhale water? The helicopter pilot walks over to me as I stand just outside of the ambulance. He asks me if I want them to be helivac’d to the hospital in Fort Bragg. I honestly don’t know. I ask the paramedics what they think, and they say I could do that, to have them examined more thoroughly, or I could take them home and check on them every few hours or so and take them in if needed.
They both want to go home, so I decide to take them home and watch them for signs of concussions or lung issues. I will take them to their doctor in Marin for check ups when we get home. I thank and hug everyone who saved them. On the drive home, Ares tells us that he was initially being tossed around, smashed against the side of the cliff, the rocks and crustaceans on them cutting him up. Somehow, he found a ledge to stand on at the entrance to a sea cave. The young man swam out to him and was able to crouch on a rock outcrop over the cave. Wave after wave crashed over his head, and he was sure he would drown, let go of the rocks he was clinging to. But the young man had convinced him to hold on. He had shouted, “Don’t you let go of that rock kid, if you do, you’ll die!’” Anais had managed to swim over to the sand bar somehow, after her raft was swept away from underneath her. But she couldn’t find Ares. She had stayed on the sand bar looking for him, until she became too cold, and swam back to me. She had been sure that Ares was gone.
I cannot get the image of the young local man out of my mind. If he hadn’t been a local, he would not have known the tides like he did, he would not have understood the danger Ares and Anais were in. If he had not been walking his dogs on the beach that day, at that time, he would not have seen their rafts being thrust out to the open ocean. If he had not alerted me when he did, I would not, I was sure, have known to call 911 in time. In short, if it wasn’t for the local, it would have been too late.
We get out of the car and go inside the house. Adam is still lying on the couch with Dexter. “How was the beach?” he asks, not looking up from his I-pad. Ares, Anais and I look at each other in silence. I go and run a hot bath. For the next seven days I wrap, unwrap, and rewrap the bandages around Ares’ hands.
Epilogue
Friday, October 27, 2017
Text message from Ares to me.
I just realized last night when I was drowning in the ocean that day in Mendo
and I was dying and throwing up salt water
I was getting crushed by the waves
I decided that I was fine with dying
I found peace with death and with my life and I was ready to die
And then I realized something
And it changed my life because
I changed my mind
The only reason I swam to those rocks and clung on to them for 45 minutes of the longest minutes of my life, While getting cut and smashed and beaten beyond belief
It wasn’t for me
It was for you and Adam and Nini
I didn’t do it for me
I did it for you guys
So thank you
I’ve never thanked you
Because
You guys saved my life
Because you treated me so well my whole life
And made my life so great that you gave me a reason
To fight for my life on that day.
And all I wanted was to get back to you
Because I didn’t want to let you and Adam and Nini
Have to deal with my death the rest of your lives
After you had treated me so well
I know I saved myself
But it was because of you
I wanted you all to know that
You and Adam and Anais are the ones who saved me
