Billy Straight

Either way, no worries.

I get up, walk across the beach to the tide line, roll my pants up and stand there, let the waves trickle over my toes.

Cold. My feet get numb and they look like white wax.

How long would it take before you stopped feeling cold? Before your body stopped feeling anything?

I read in a nature book that gazelles and wildebeest chased by lions stop feeling pain, so their death becomes easier.

That didn't happen to me with the pervs, so maybe it's just animals.

Or maybe I just didn't get… close enough.

If you didn't feel or worry, you could just give yourself up like some sacrifice- like Jesus did.

I must have walked, because now I'm in the water up to my knees and my pants are getting wet and kind of ballooning and swirling around. Not so cold anymore. It feels clean. I keep going. The water's sloshing against my belt and I stand there and look across the ocean; maybe I'll see a boat or a whale spouting.

A few birds are out there, flying around, diving. I take another step. Just one, but it makes a big difference, the ground drops out from under me and all of a sudden I'm up to my neck, trying to step back, but I can't get a hold on to anything and now I feel the water moving under me and I'm in over my head, swallowing water, choking- up again, I can see the top of the water, the beach is getting smaller. I start to swim, but it doesn't help. Something's pushing me forward, I have no control, start kicking, waving my arms around, knowing this is stupid, you have to stay calm stay calm, but I'm being pushed out, forced, I don't want this! I'm tiny, weaker than a barnacle, because I have no glue. Why am I thinking about Mom now, how bad she'll feel, so cold, my eyes burn, my throat burns, my eyes got to keep them open but ohnocan'tkeepmyheadabov

Up in the air again, coughing spitting, eyes burning, throat hurts like a knife scraping it and I'm still being carried out by the- no, the beach is getting closer-

The ocean tosses me up, the sand gets even closer. Releasing me, like Jonah? No, no, here I go under again, swallowing so much water I think I'll explode, then up, coughing, vomiting, rocks in the water, hitting me, stinging.

The ocean playing with me. Which way will it throw me now?

Stones scraping the bottom of my body. The ground. Sand.

Back on shore.

Sand sticks to my soaked clothes. Salt in the scratches makes them burn. I roll away from the water.

Safe.

Another chance.

God?

Or did even the ocean think I was trash, spit me back like bad food?

I hurry back toward the pier, still coughing and spitting up salt water, collapse, stay there trying to get a little sun, dry out. A few people are out on the beach now. I just mind my own business. After an hour I'm drier, but still wet, my chest hurts and I'm scratched up by the sand but… I'm here.

I need to concentrate. Money and a hat. Some food. Sunscreen.

Mostly dry, I take a walk up to the pier. There's a Ferris wheel, some bumper cars, and a merry-go-round, but they're all shut and locked and there's nothing to take there. A few restaurants, but they're closed, too, and the only food around is dry bits of popcorn stuck to the floor.

All the way at the end of the pier is a bait shack that's open, some dirty-looking guy behind a counter and big white bathtub-type tanks full of anchovies, some of them already dead and floating to the top. A few people are fishing, mostly old Chinese guys and a few black guys. No one's catching anything; everyone looks bored.

The two garbage cans I find are full of fish guts and they stink so bad I almost puke. I leave the pier.

Up above the beach is a street full of fancy-looking restaurants and hotels; nothing there for me. North is a small park with some old people and homeless guys, and if you keep looking, the street just seems to disappear. All those trees- too much like you-know-where.

So I walk south and things start to look a little more familiar- motels and apartment buildings, weirdos who could be from the Boulevard. I find half a doughnut on the street and it looks okay so I eat it. Next block, I see part of a Twix bar left on the sidewalk, but it's too melted and gross-looking and I only eat a small bit of it.

A while later, a sign says I'm in Venice. Small houses, people, lots of Mexicans. I walk down a street. At the end is the ocean again, and soon I'm on this big wide path called Ocean Front Walk, like a giant sidewalk, the ocean on one side, stores on the other, all sorts of people- punks, blacks, beautiful bikini-girls on roller skates, their butt cheeks hanging out, guys looking at them. Young guys- like college students- old people sitting on benches, bikers with tattoos, lots of big, mean-looking dogs. Some Arnold Schwarzenegger-type guys are exercising in these fenced-off areas, their bodies all greased up so the muscles look like grapefruit trying to burst through the skin. Lifting weights, rubbing chalk on their hands, being huge and cool, showing off.

The stores here are mostly small and cheap-looking. Fast food, stands selling ice cream, cold drinks, sunglasses, souvenirs, postcards, T-shirts, bathing suits.

Hats that say CALIFORNIA! or MALIBU! or VENICE! I'd love some dry clothing, but there are too many people around to take something.

Still, this might be a good place to hang out, see what happens later.

I decide to walk from one end of Ocean Front to the other, see what turns up.

Halfway down, I see a little gray building with a six-pointed star over the door. A Jewish star- I know that from my history book, the chapter “The Middle East: Birth of Civilization.”

A Jewish church- what do they call them, synagons? I go over. Jewish letters next to the door, then English ones. Over the door it says CONGREGATION BETH TORAH.

This might be good. The Jews always have money. At least that's what Moron used to say- he'd go off on how they were all fucking bankers, sucking the blood out of the country, killing Jesus, and now they wanted to take our money, too.

Like he ever had money.

Then I think: Why would he be right? He was wrong about everything else. But still… what's a church doing in the middle of all these businesses unless they're out to make money?

It wasn't just Moron; Mom used to agree with him, say, Cowboy, they really got a talent for making money, must be in the blood.

“You stupid bitch.” He laughed. “It ain't talent, it's 'cause they cheat us. Fucking ZOG- know what that is? Zionist Occupation Government, they want to take us over, not even human- come from the devil fucking a snake, didja know that? The Aryan race is the bona fide chosen people.”

That night I was sitting at the kitchen table trying to study the Civil War. But then Mom started telling a story and I listened. About some rich Jewish family who owned a big strawberry farm down near Oxnard; her parents and her used to pick there when she was a kid. How the Jews had a big white two-story house and a Cadillac.

“Fucking bloodsuckers,” Moron said.

“Actually, they was okay, kinda nice-” she started. But he looked at her and she said, “Except they sure loved their money. The wife always dressed like she was going out to di

“Fucking A.”

Even if it's mostly lies, sometimes lies have some truth. And I don't need thousands of Jewish dollars, just some spare change.

A sign next to the synagon door says prayers will be held on Friday night and that the time for lighting candles is 7:34 P.M., whatever that means.

No one's looking. I try the door. Locked. The next place over is called Cafe Eats, and it's closed too.