Outro: The Serial Novel

Twenty-nine

The Jedi Frisbee Trick

It’s a brilliant mid-April Tuesday. Waiting at the light over Highway 16, I can see Mt. Rainier as if it’s a pop-up in a gigantic children’s book. I notice another mountain in the distance past its southern shoulder, and realize that I have never seen this mountain before. That’s how clear it is. I take a mental note to look it up when I get to the library.

Exiting my truck in the library parking lot always gives me an olfactory thrill, until I realize that the cedar smell comes from the neighboring lot, where a dozen trees have been cut down for a new office building. Across the street, an entire forest has disappeared for the sake of some ginormous retail outlet. Such is the steady encroachment of success – and the new Narrows Bridge taking form next to the old one, promising to bring more commuters from Seattle and Tacoma. I suppose I should be excited for the greening of my tip jar, but I am beginning to mourn the old, modest Gig Harbor like a 70-year-old bench-sitting nostalgia whore.

It’s a few days before the tax deadline, so the foyer is still packed with forms. I pick up an automatic extension, because if someone’s offering free time, I’m taking.

The internet stations are lovely things, with sharp, thin monitors and keyboards that give out tasty popcorn clicks when you type on them. I also enjoy the printing policy, which operates entirely on trust. It’s ten cents a page, which you deposit in a clear plastic box. The bottom of the box is cushioned, to prevent the disruption of clacking quarters.

I find a corner cubicle, enter the number on my library card, and immediately have my answer – revealed by the news capsule on the search engine page: Soldiers Sentenced in Civilian Killings. I have learned to hate headlines; their brevity constantly misleads. This one makes it sound like Conrad and Kai carried out the killings themselves. The headline is technically correct, but it has a rotten soul.

I click the link, my heart tapdancing. Half a second into my download, I learn that Conrad got a year in prison – for the coverup, for being the commanding officer. For faking Harvey’s suicide. I scroll down until the second shoe drops: Kai, suspended sentence, regular psychiatric evaluations. Because his was a noble act. Because of his mental state after killing his best friend. Because he wasn’t the commanding officer.

In essence, Conrad has done what a good leader does – taken the brunt of it for an injured subordinate. I decide that I will track down Becky and see how she’s doing – and find out if I can visit him.



Naturally, I thought I might hear from Kai. It’s been a month since the trial. Becky hasn’t heard a thing about him; I feel guilty even asking, my ulteriors showing through like a cheap slip.

It’s May. The trees have dropped all their blossoms, are beginning to green up. Life is passing at the rate of freeway traffic, and I have arrived at Monday morning, on the shore of a four-day karaokeless ocean. I get up. Java has made no magical appearance. I manage to shower, and groom myself, and dress, just like a person who could be seen in public with other persons. I stare out my French windows at my too-familiar backyard: the Doug fir that leans in like a gambler peeking at his neighbor’s cards, the tiny hump of faraway ridgeline that rises over my fence. And ridiculous, overzealous sunshine, everywhere. Oh God oh God, it’s noon. I will remain here all day unless I can manage to kick my ass off this bed. There’s only one thing that will do the trick: drive, drive like crazy.

I traverse the Narrows, looking across at enormous sections of roadway dangling from what look like kite strings. Highway 16 doglegs to the asphalt Mississippi of I-5, heading south. But the roadside clutters up with bad memories: the Nisqually Delta keep driving the Olympia marina keep driving. I spot the ramp for 101, a binary sandwich of a number whispering promises of the Pacific Ocean, so that’s where we’re going.

An hour later, I’m cruising a long, lush valley past twin nuclear towers – coolers for a power plant that was never completed. I see a sign reading Ocean Shores. It sounds like a generic product: Toothpaste, Light Beer, Ocean Shores. So okay, I’m buying.

I wind through the harborside towns of Aberdeen and Hoquiam, then follow a road along the tidal flats – which right now contain about ten million pounds of hideous muck. Escape arrives on an evergreen ascent, which flattens out along a peninsula, and soon I’m turning left onto the main strip of Ocean Shores. An Irish pub hooks me with a sign reading Comfort Food; I wander in on road-stiff legs and order a potato chowder as thick as tapioca pudding, topped with starry flakes of parsley. The bread is dark, chewy and mysterious. I was so right to kick my ass off that bed.

Roundly fortified, I head into town, take an oceanward right and spy a municipal-looking restroom between two enormous hotels. I park there, trek a wide swath of dunes and discover a beach that runs a mile across and an eternity to right and left, composed of damp slate-brown sand. I’m a little alarmed when a car passes in front of me, a hybrid compact filled with gray-haired passengers. After a half-mile of northward walking, I come upon a college-age boy and girl, tossing a Frisbee, and give a smile as I pass. The sun is to the south, so my shadow precedes me on the sand. I hear the girl exclaim “Oh!” and then I find a small, dark oval hovering over my shadow. I raise my left arm, turn my hand so it faces behind me and close my fingers on the rim of the disc. I’m running a fingernail over its ribbed surface when the girl, an energetic lankiness of elbows and knees, rushes up.

“Holy shit! How did you do that?”

I guess I’m in a mood. I give her a perfectly serious look and say, “The secret is to let the Frisbee do what the Frisbee wants to do.”

Carye takes a second to consider my wisdom and then explodes in laughter. An hour later, we’re gathered at a driftwood fire – more for atmosphere than warmth – and I have just finished relating the Tragical History of Harvey.

“Shit!” says Joe. “Shit!” He brushes away a hank of hair that seems irresistibly drawn to his eyelashes, then takes another toke and passes it my way.

Carye says, “We came out here because Kurt Cobain grew up here.”

I’m looking for a segue – suicidal young men? – but then, we’re smoking. Segues are not required.

“Hoquiam or Aberdeen,” says Joe. “Depending on who you ask.”

“They seem to be having a debate about it,” says Carye.

“Come to the town that sucks so bad you’ll want to blow your head off,” says Joe.

Carye laughs wildly. “But not before writing some kickass rock.”

I can see why Joe and Carye are a couple. They speak in a tightly knit tandem, like relay runners passing a baton. Or perhaps it’s just the weed.

“We’re from Humboldt County,” says Carye. “In Northern California.”

Which is why this homegrown is so almighty powerful,” says Joe, with a wheezy laugh.

“It gets pretty cloudy there,” says Carye. “But we thought it would be cool to see how bad it gets in a place called the Rain Coast.”

“Absolute bullshit,” says Joe. “It’s been like Laguna Beach all week.”

“Where’s Laguna Beach?” asks Carye.

“No fuckin’ idea,” says Joe. “But it sounds sunny.”

“But your story,” says Carye. “God, Channy… What a great name that is: Channy. You are so strong to have gotten through that. You are a powerful woman.”

Carye’s admiring look – plus, probably, the weed – fills me up to bursting. As if to disprove her conclusion I start to cry, and soon find myself wrapped in a Joe and Carye sandwich.

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