and pale, with eyes like day-old blood blisters-to drop on me from
above or to soar out of the shadows around my feet or to spring like an
evil jack-in-the-box from a furnace door.
He was not waiting anywhere along my route.
Outside, Orson came to me from among the tombstones, where he had
hidden from Pinn. Judging by the dog’s demeanor, the mortician was
gone.
He stared at me with great curiosity-or I imagined that he did-and I
said, “I don’t really know what happened in there. I don’t know what
it meant.”
He appeared dubious. He has a gift for looking dubious: the blunt
face, the unwavering eyes.
“Truly,” I insisted.
With Orson padding at my side, I returned to my bicycle. The granite
angel guarding my transportation did not resemble me in the least.
The fretful wind had again subsided into a caressing breeze, and the
oaks stood silent. • shifting filigree of clouds was silver across the
silver moon.
A large flock of chimney swifts swooped down from the church roof and
alighted in the trees, and a few nightingales returned, too, as though
the cemetery had not been sanctified until Pinn had departed it.
Holding my bike by the handlebars, I pondered the ranks of tombstones
and said: the dark grew solid around them, finally changing to
earth.”
That’s Louise Ghick, a great poet.”
Orson chuffed as if in agreement.
“I don’t know what’s happening here, but I think a lot of people are
going to die before this is over-and some of them are likely to be
people we love. Maybe even me. Or You.”
Orson’s gaze was solemn.
I looked past the cemetery at the streets of my hometown, which were
suddenly a lot scarier than any boneyard.
“Let’s get a beer,” I said.
I climbed on my bike, and Orson danced a dog dance across the graveyard
grass, and for the time being, we left the dead behind.
The cottage is the ideal residence for a boardhead like Bobby. It
stands on the southern horn of the bay, far out on the point, the sole
structure within three-quarters of a mile. Point-break surf surrounds
it.
From town, the lights of Bobby Halloway’s house appear to be so far
from the lights along the inner curve of the bay that tourists assume
they are seeing a boat anchored in the channel beyond our sheltered
waters.
To longtime residents, the cottage is a landmark.
The place was constructed forty-five years ago, before many
restrictions were placed on coastal building, and it never acquired
neighbors because, in those days, there was an abundance of cheap land
along the shore, where the wind and the weather were more accommodating
than on the point, and where there were streets and convenient utility
hookups.
By the time the shore lots-then the hills behind them-filled up,
regulations issued by the California Coastal Commission had made
building on the bay horns impossible.
Long before the house came into Bobby’s possession, a grandfather
clause in the law preserved its existence. Bobby intended to die in
this singular place, he said, shrouded in the sound of breaking
surf-but not until well past the middle of the first century of the new
millennium.
No paved or graveled road leads along the horn, only a wide rock track
flanked by low dunes precariously held in place by tall, sparse shore
grass.
The horns that embrace the bay are natural formations, curving
peninsulas: They are the remnants of the rim of a massive extinct
volcano. The bay itself is a volcanic crater layered with sand by
thousands of years of tides. Near shore, the southern horn is three to
four hundred feet wide, but it narrows to a hundred at the point.
When I was two-thirds of the way to Bobby’s house, I had to get off my
bike and walk it. Soft drifts of sand, less than a foot deep, sloped
across the rock trail. They would pose no obstacle to Bobby’s
four-wheel-drive Jeep wagon, but they made pedaling difficult.
This walk was usually peaceful, encouraging meditation. Tonight the
horn was serene, but it seemed as alien as a spine of rock on the moon,